He woke again, and it was dark. A tallow lamp sputtered by the bed. His head ached, and his broken leg throbbed dully; but the pain was much better, much eased, much gone, and he could leave his eyes open.
The room focused, and he saw Stipock sitting by his bed. "Hi," he said, and Stipock smiled. "How do you feel?" Stipock asked softly.
"The pain's not as bad."
"Good. We've done all we can do. Now it's up to your leg to heal."
Hoom smiled wanly.
Stipock turned toward somewhere else — a door, Hoom assumed — and said, "He's awake now. You can call the others." Then he turned back to Hoom and said, "I know you don't feel well, but some decisions have to be made, that only you can make."
Footsteps coming into the room, and one by one they came into Hoom's range of vision. First Noyock, looking grave. Then Esten, her eyes red from crying. And then Aven.
Seeing his father, Hoom turned his head upward, to the ceiling.
"Hoom," said Noyock,
"Yes," Hoom answered, his voice soft and husky.
"Stipock wants to take care of you," Noyock said. "He wants to take you out of your father's home, if you want to, and take care of you until you can walk again."
Hoom tried to control them, but the tears dripped out of the corners of his eyes anyway.
"But, Hoom, your father also wants to take care of you."
"No," Hoom said.
"Your father wants to say something to you."
"No."
"Please," said Aven. "Please listen to me, son."
"I'm not your son," Hoom said softly. "You told me so."
"I'm sorry for that. You know how it was. I went crazy for a minute."
"I want to go with Stipock," Hoom said.
Silence for a few moments, and then Aven bitterly spat out his feelings about Stipock, who came to steal children away from their parents. "I won't let you take the boy!" Aven said, and might have said more except that Noyock's voice, harsh with anger, cut through.
"Yes, you will, Aven!"
"Father!" Aven cried out, anguished.
"The law says that after a father has injured his child, the child must be taken by another family, for its own protection."
"Stipock isn't a family," Aven said.
"I will be," Stipock said, "when your son is living with me."
"It only makes sense, Aven," Noyock said. "Stipock can help the boy now — you can't."
"I can help him," Aven insisted.
"By pushing him out of windows?" Stipock quietly asked.
"Shut up, Stipock," Noyock answered mildly. "I'll ask Hoom one more time, and then that's it, and there'll be no complaint, no more discussion, and no resistance, or I swear I'll have you bound up and kept in a locked room until Jason comes again. Now, Hoom, will you stay with Stipock, or with your father?"
Hoom half–smiled. He felt a glow of satisfaction: the broken leg would be worth it, for the chance to make this choice. "Stipock is my father," Hoom said. And Aven's low moan of pain was some measure of repayment, Hoom felt, for the pain he had gone through. With that thought he closed his eyes and dozed.
But he became vaguely alert again a few minutes later. It seemed that Noyock and Stipock were alone in the room, and they were arguing.
"You see the harm it caused," Stipock said.
"The law didn't give you any power to take this boy out of his father's home until his father nearly killed him."
"The law is the law," Noyock said, "and only Jason can change it."
"That's the point!" Stipock insisted. "The law needs to be changed. If Jason were here, he'd change it, wouldn't he?"
"Maybe," Noyock said.
"Then why can't we? Not just you and me, but all the people. Vote. Let the majority change the law."
Noyock sighed. "It's what you've wanted all along, Stipock. To let the majority of people in Heaven City change any one of Jason's laws they want."
"Just this law," Stipock said. "Just the law that lets fathers beat their children."
"Just this law? I'm not a fool, Stipock, though you seem to feel that everyone in Heaven City is stupider than a newborn pig. Once we've changed one law that way, there'll be other laws to change, and people will begin to think all the laws are changeable."
"Aren't they?" Stipock asked. "Why don't you just ask them? On Jason's Day, when they gather at First field, call a council, ask them to vote on whether voting should be allowed. See what they decide."
"I said, Stipock, that I'm not a fool. If I let them vote on anything, that becomes a lawful way for decisions to be made."
"So you aren't going to change the law?"
"Just let me think, Stipock."
"Let you? I'm begging you to. Do you really think the majority of people in this colony will decide stupidly? Don't you trust them?"
"I trust them, Stipock. It's you I don't trust." And Noyock left the room, his footfalls ringing in Hoom's ears.
"Stipock," Hoom whispered.
"Hmmm? Are you awake? Did we wake you?"
"That's all right." Hoom found it hard to use his voice. It was hoarse. Had he cried out that much from the pain? He didn't remember shouting at all — but his voice was as hoarse as if he had been yelling all day in the fields. "Stipock, what's a colony?"
"What? Oh, yes, I did use the word — it's still hard, even after all these months —"
"What is a colony?"
"It's a place where — it's when some people leave their homes behind, and go to a new place, and start to live there, far away from the others. Heaven City's a colony, because the — uh, the Ice People — they left the Empire and came across the space between the stars and lived here."
Hoom nodded. He had heard that story before — Stipock's miracle stories, they all called them behind his back. Wix didn't believe them, and Hoom wasn't sure.
"When we live across the river, we'll be a colony, then, won't we?"
"Yes, I guess so."
"Stipock."
"Yes."
"Move me across the river."
Stipock chuckled. "When you can walk again."
"No. Move me now."
"Your leg is bound up. You can't walk for months, Hoom."
"Then get my friends to carry me. Take me out of Heaven City . I want to get out of Heaven City . Even if I have to live in the open, in a tent. Get me out. Get me out." And Hoom's voice drifted away as he slept again.
Stipock sat studying the boy's quiet, gentle, but pain–scarred face. The lips were turned permanently downward; the forehead, even in sleep, was furrowed; the eyes were bagged with exhaustion, not crinkled with laughter as they should have been.
"All right," Stipock whispered. "Yes, now. That's a good idea, Hoom. Very good idea."
Two days later, two horses drew the cart that carried Hoom jokingly down Noyock's Road to Linkeree's Bay. Then, with a crowd of several hundred people gathered around, they carried Hoom on a plank out to the boat, which was waiting a few meters from shore. And the boat, this time in broad daylight, spread its white wings and danced skimmingly out of the bay into the current. Hoom laughed with pleasure — at his freedom, at the movement of the boat on the water, at his friends' proof of their true friendship. Dilna was at the tiller, and she smiled at him. Wix poked him now and then with his toe as he passed, working the sails, just to let him know he was noticed. And then they reached the other shore, and they set him down by a tree to watch as they cleared a patch of ground and laid the walls of a rough cabin. The floor was of planks, which had been cut the day before, and the door and windows were gaping holes. The roof couldn't be put on before dark, but they all promised they'd be back in the morning, and then carried Hoom inside. He looked around at the walls of his house.