Part 5 (1/2)

”You're stuck here for good and you know it. Your brother Stheno knows it. He's the hardest working farmer in the colony.”

”That's a good thing, surely.”

”Yes, but the rest of you carry on like... Well, like you're at the hunting lodge for the summer, and wouldn't it be fun to play at shepherds and shepherdesses.”

”No we don't.”

”Oh, right. So it's fine for you to herd pigs, but will they let you learn a trade? Like h.e.l.l they will. That'd mean accepting accepting. They won't stand for it. And they treat Stheno as if he's simple or something. They're sorry for him, and they look down their noses at him.”) ”I'll talk to Father about it,” Luso said, and the decision was made. ”There's got to be something you can do. We've just got to figure out what it could possibly be.”

That remark cost Gignomai a night's sleep. He lay awake, listening to a rat busy in the thatch, and tried to come up with something. At all costs, he had to have a viable proposition to put to Father with which to pre-empt any suggestions Luso might make. He was confident Father would give him an opportunity to do so. Father was a fair-minded man on those occasions when he was prepared to take official notice of his children.

He shook his head, as if trying to throw off something horrible climbing all over his face.

What, though?

The undeniable truth about Stheno was that he was big. Luso was tall, slim and frighteningly strong, but he only just came up to Stheno's rock-like shoulder. Luso could punch a hole in a door, but Stheno could catch a six-month-old bull calf, wrestle it down and carry it on his back.

The other thing about Stheno was that he was worried. Regardless of what was happening, rain or s.h.i.+ne, good season or bad, Stheno lived in a state of permanent anxiety, torn between the aftermath of the last difficulty and the looming prospect of the next disaster but one. When you talked to him, you knew his mind was on something, or many things else. He was gentle and kind and never lost his temper, but you were never in any doubt but that you were the least of his concerns.

Finding Stheno wasn't easy, unless you'd studied him carefully over many years. The trick was to keep your eyes open as you went around the farm and figure out where the next calamity was likely to be: a weak point in the fence where the cattle could get through; a bridge on the point of collapse; a field of corn over heavy or just starting to be pulled apart by rooks. If you wanted Stheno for something, you'd go to where the breakdown and the failure was likeliest to be, and chances were, there you'd find him.

On this occasion he was out at one of the more distant cattle sheds. One of the door-pillars, which had been giving notice for at least five years, had finally slithered out of true, and the unsupported wall had dropped, snapping the roof-tree, so that from a distance, the shed looked as though it had fallen from a great height. Stheno had got his shoulder under the lintel and was slowly, agonisingly heaving the shed upright with his right arm wrapped round a ma.s.sive post which he was hoping to use as a temporary prop. If he managed it (and Stheno always managed, somehow), it'd stay propped up like that, with its broken roof and burst walls, for another six months or so until it disintegrated for good, because there wouldn't be time or resources to come back another day and do a proper job. Another disaster would have intervened by then, clamouring for Stheno's attention like a hungry child.

”Need a hand?” Gignomai called out.

”Gig?” Stheno couldn't look round. He was wrestling with the shed like the hero in the fairy tale who wrestled with Death for the life of his mother. ”Get hold of this post, and when I say push...”

(It was, Gignomai decided, rather like Luso and fencing, or Luso and Stheno and strength. He had no idea if he was a good fencer or physically strong. All he knew was that he was a worse fencer than Luso and not nearly as strong as Stheno. No absolutes, just comparatives.) It was mostly a determination not to fail that made it possible for him to drag the bottom of the giant post onto the flat rock Stheno had put there for a base, and then jam the top under the lintel, while Stheno heaved on it like someone trying to tear the sky off the earth with his bare hands. They managed it, and for quite some time afterwards, neither of them could spare any breath for talking.

”Remind me,” Gignomai said, ”what we use this shed for?”

”Haven't actually used it for a while,” Stheno replied, ”but we stored hay for the upper pastures here when I was a kid. Saved having to drag it all the way down to the yard and back again.”

Gignomai did the calculations in his head: man-hours wasted, productivity squandered. ”We ought to fix it up,” he said.

”I will, when I've got five minutes.”

(And the chances of Stheno having five minutes were about the same as Gignomai learning to fly like a bird, or the met'Oc ever going Home.) Stheno took a few steps back and gazed at the shed with sadness and loathing. ”Right,” he said. ”What can I do for you?”

They're sorry for him, Furio had said, and they look down their noses at him. ”Have you got a minute? I wanted to ask you something.”

”Sure,” Stheno replied. ”I'm heading down to Pitland.”

Pitland was a joke. It was a fifteen-acre field on a slope like the side of a house, but the soil was good and inexplicably deep-one of the few cultivable places where drainage wasn't an issue. Therefore, Stheno ploughed it every year, balancing on the edge like a fly on a wall and, when the inevitable happened and the plough toppled over, broke the traces and went tumbling down the slope, he hauled it back up again, one monstrous step at a time. Now, however, the corn was green and hopeful, and the problem was the branch of a great oak that had come down on top of the fence, shattering the rails and skewing the posts, allowing access to deer, boar and every other relentless enemy of agriculture lurking in the woods. Gignomai had been waiting for the branch to fall for years.

There wasn't time to go back for axes and saws, so they lugged the branch off in one piece, then did the best they could for the fence by tamping stones down into the post holes and binding up the fractured rails with about a mile of string. ”I don't know,” Stheno said, cutting round a knot with his knife. It was astonis.h.i.+ng that fingers that big could make something as delicate as a knot. ”I'd have thought it was up to you. What do you want want to do?” to do?”

”I know what I don't don't want to do,” Gignomai replied. ”I want to stay well clear of the family business.” want to do,” Gignomai replied. ”I want to stay well clear of the family business.”

Stheno grinned. ”Which is?”

”I don't want to get mixed up with what Luso does,” Gignomai said. ”It's not right and it's stupid, and one of these days he'll get himself killed.”

Stheno looked the other way. ”And I take it you don't want to work on the farm, either.”

”No.”

”And who could possibly blame you for that?” Stheno said cheerfully. ”Not sure what else there is, though.”

Gignomai took a moment to prepare himself, as though he was about to challenge G.o.d to a duel. ”Ask yourself,” he said, ”what's the one thing we need around here and haven't got?”

”Just one thing?” Stheno shrugged. ”Enlighten me.”

”Money,” Gignomai said forcefully. ”Well, it's true, isn't it? Father talks to you. How much money have we actually got?”

Stheno frowned. ”You know,” he said, ”that's a good question. I haven't got a clue. I know there's that rosewood box in Dad's study, I think there may be some in there, but I've never actually looked.”

”Luso did,” Gignomai replied quickly. ”He told me. There's thirty gold angels, a dozen or so thalers and some copper. That's it. And that was ten years ago, and I'll bet you that money came from Home, when we first moved here.”

”There's your answer, then,” Stheno said, matching the two parts of a splintered rail. ”We've got on for seventy years without it, so we don't need it. And we don't, do we?”

”That's like saying the donkey doesn't need feeding,” Gignomai said, ”which it doesn't, until it dies. Well, think about it. I don't suppose Grandfather came here with no more than thirty angels. I bet that box was full, and others like it. If there's only thirty angels left, it means we've nearly run out.”

”False premise,” Stheno said. ”Start wrapping the string, will you? You're a.s.suming we use money. Tell me what we use it for.”

”I don't know,” Gignomai confessed. ”But that's because n.o.body tells me anything.”

”You have your own ways of finding things out, so I'm told.”

”Well, not about that. But anyway,” he went on, ”think about what we could do if we had some money. Stuff we could buy. New tools, materials. Can you think of anything we've got that's not flogged out and patched up?”

Stheno shrugged, like a cow dislodging flies. ”What's that got to do with you?”

”We could trade,” Gignomai said.

”Really.”

”Yes. The Opellos would pay us a quarter a dozen for squirrel pelts. More, probably. And rabbits and hares.”

”I see,” Stheno said slowly. ”So basically, you want to go into business as a rat-catcher.”

”That's just an example,” Gignomai said, making himself stay calm. ”We've got a seam of top-grade clay. They haven't got anything anywhere near as good down on the flat. And have you got any idea what lumber goes for down there? Or charcoal? They're s.h.i.+pping in charcoal from Home, it costs them an absolute fortune, and we could supply them for a fraction of what they're paying and still make out like bandits.”

Stheno raised his eyebrows. ”Do what?”

”Sorry,” Gignomai said, with a grin. ”It's one of my friend Furio's expressions. It means we could make a lot of money.”

Stheno nodded slowly. ”Charcoal,” he said, ”is one of the monopolies. They're obliged to buy it from Home, it's the law.”

”Right. And who's going to tell on them? And there's more to it than that,” he went on, unable to control himself now that someone was actually listening. ”The way Luso's carrying on, it won't be long before they've had enough of us and they come for us with weapons. But if we start selling them stuff, things they actually want, then they'll need us. It's not just about trade and money, it's about survival. You do see that, don't you?”