Earthfall (Homecoming) (17 page)

Everyone could see how Elemak struggled between belief and skepticism. It was not as if he had it in him to be subtle or clever. Everyone was getting logy and stupid from the lack of oxygen. They could remember that once they had good, quick judgment, but they couldn’t remember what it even felt like. Elemak blinked slowly, looking at her.

“I know who the strongest, best man is,” she said. “Not one who relies on tricks and machines, on lies and deception. You’re the honest one.”

His lip curled in contempt at her obvious flattery. Yet he was also affected by it. Someone understands. Even if she’s just mouthing empty words, the words
are
being said.

“But the liars have the upper hand.
They’re
the ones who are holding our babies hostage, not you. Sometimes a man has to give in to evil in order to save his children.”

Most of those listening knew that they were hearing a distortion of the truth. And yet they wanted it to be believed, wanted Elemak at least to believe it, because if he did, it would provide him with a way to surrender and still be noble and heroic in his own eyes. Let this be the version of history that Elemak believes in, so that our history can go on beyond this hour.

“Do you think I’ll be fooled when Nafai starts strutting around here again? Him and his sparkling cloak embedded in his flesh, making him look like a machine himself—I’ll be grateful to go back into suspended animation for the rest of the voyage, so I don’t have to look at him. When I wake up, let it be on Earth, with you beside me, and our children still to raise. They’ll grow older. Time will pass. And you’ll still be my husband and a great man in the eyes of all who know the truth.”

Elemak looked at her sharply. Or at least he tried to be sharp. Now and then she simply went out of focus.

She opened her mouth to speak again, but Protchnu laid a hand on her shoulder and she settled back, sitting on her ankles, as Protchnu stepped forward and spoke quietly, where few but Elemak could hear. “Pick the time of battle,” he said quietly. “You taught me that back in Vusadka. Pick the time of battle.”

Elemak answered him just as softly. “They’ve won already, Protchnu. By the time I awoke they had already cheated you out of your inheritance. Look at you, so young, so small.”

“Do what it takes to let us all live, Father. Someday I will not be small, and then we’ll have vengeance on our enemies.”

Elemak studied his face. “
Our
enemies?”

“What they have done to the father, they have done to the son,” whispered Protchnu. “I will never, never, never, never, never forget.”

It filled Elemak with hope, to hear such resolve, such hatred in his son’s voice.

He rose to his feet. All eyes were upon him, watching as he took Protchnu by the hand and led him to the ladderway in the middle of the room. He turned back. “Meb. Obring.”

They got up slowly.

“Come with me.”

“Who’ll watch these people, then?” asked Obring.

“I don’t care,” said Elemak. “I’m tired of looking at them.”

He dropped down the ladderway, Protchnu after him, and then Obring and Meb.

As soon as they were gone, the women gathered around Eiadh. “Thank you,” they said softly. “It was brave of you.” “You were wonderful.” “Thank you.”

Even Luet took Eiadh’s hands in hers. “Today you were the greatest among women. It’s over now, because of you.”

Eiadh could only press her face into her hands and weep. For she had overheard the words that Protchnu said to Elemak, had heard the hatred in his voice, and she knew that Protchnu was not putting on a performance as she had done, not now, anyway. Protchnu would carry on his father’s hatred into the next generation. It was all for nothing. She had humbled herself for nothing. “For nothing,” she murmured.

“Not for nothing,” said Luet. “For our children. For all the children. I say it again, Eiadh. Today you were the greatest among women.”

Luet knelt beside her; Eiadh reached out to her and wept against her shoulder.

The door opened and the light came on. Nafai’s eyes adjusted quickly. Elemak, Mebbekew, Obring, and Elya’s son, Protchnu. He could see the hatred in their eyes, all of them.

They’ve come to kill me.

To Nafai’s surprise, the thought did not come as a relief. Despite all his words of desperation to the Oversoul, he did not really want to die. But he would do it, he would submit to it, if that’s what would bring peace.

To his surprise, Elemak knelt down at his feet and began fumbling with the knots at his ankles. Mebbekew joined him, working on the knots at his wrists.

His skin was sore there, and their working chafed him painfully. After his beating, after the Oversoul had caused the cloak to heal him, Nafai had resumed letting the sores at his ankles and wrists go unhealed. Now it made the moment of release almost excruciating.

“We’ve taken an oath,” Elemak said quietly. “The oath Father administered to everyone else on the ship.
He
is the sole ruler of the colony. No one else is his second in command or his chief adviser or any other such fiction that disguises power.
He
will rule. I’ve taken the oath, and so have Meb and Obring. And my son Protchnu. As long as Volemak lives, we obey him and no other.”

“That’s a good oath,” said Nafai softly. He did not add: If only you had taken it earlier and lived by it, as I did from my childhood on. It would have spared us a lot of trouble.

“You go straight from here and take the oath as well,” said Meb.

The cords at his neck, the cords that had pulled his body in a backward arch, suddenly released. Pain shot up and down his back. He moaned.

“Stop the histrionics,” said Meb contemptuously. “We know you could heal this in a moment if you wanted to.”

His feet and hands were numb; they felt like heavy clubs, sluggish, not obeying what he told them to do. As he rolled onto his stomach, his back ached and he could hardly pull himself up onto his knees. Bracing himself on the wall, he finally stood on unsteady legs. “Where’s Father?” asked Nafai. “I must go and take the oath.”

“Oykib and Chveya haven’t taken it yet, either,” said Obring.

“Go get them, then,” Elemak answered scornfully. “Are you still waiting for me to command you? I’m not in charge here anymore.”

“And neither am I,” said Nafai.

But he was. Already the cloak was giving him whatever information he wanted. “There is enough oxygen in the working reserve to bring us up near normal for two hours. That will be enough time to oxygenate everyone’s blood and for all of us to enter suspended animation. Then the ship can replenish itself before anybody else wakes up.”

Elemak laughed nastily. “What, aren’t you going to promise us to stay asleep till we reach Earth?”

“I’m going to resume the school where we left off,” said Nafai. “If Father says I should.”

“I have no doubt that he’ll say whatever you want him to say.”

“Then you don’t know him or me at all. Because Father will say whatever the Oversoul wants him to say, and nothing else.”

“Oh, let’s not argue, Nafai,” said Elemak, with exaggerated cheeriness. “We must be
friends
now.”

Nafai walked in silence, leaning against the corridor walls as he needed to, grateful for the low gravity. “Is this really what you want for Protchnu, Elemak? To feed him this steady diet of hate?”

“Hate is the richest of foods,” said Elemak. “It makes you strong, it fills you with power. And I have a banquet of it to give my children.”

“Let there be peace between your children and mine, Elya,” said Nafai.

“Between your big, tall children and my little tiny ones?” asked Elemak. “Of course there’ll be peace, the way there’s peace between the lion and the fly.”

They reached the door of Volemak’s and Rasa’s room just as Obring returned with Oykib and Chveya. Wordlessly Chveya embraced her father, and he leaned on her as they went into the room.

Nafai knelt and took the oath, holding his father’s hand as he did it. Chveya and Oykib followed him.

Feebly, Volemak spoke from the bed. “Then it’s done. All have taken the oath. Give us the oxygen now, and let us return to sleep.”

In only a few seconds, they began to feel the difference, all of them. The breaths they were taking were deep enough, and in a few moments their panting, their gasping, began to cause them to feel drunk on oxygen, faint with air. Then their bodies adjusted, their breathing went back to normal, and it was as if nothing had ever been wrong. Mothers wept over their babies, now breathing normally. Children began to laugh and shout and run, because at last they could.

Long before the two hours were up, however, the laughing and shouting had ended. Parents put their children to sleep. Zdorab and Shedemei put all the adults to sleep then, except for Nafai, who stayed apart from all the others so as not to cause needless offense to Elemak and those who regretted his defeat.

Once again Nafai and Shedemei stood over the chamber where Zdorab lay. “Forgive me, Nafai,” said Zdorab.

“I already have,” said Nafai. “Luet explained to me what you were thinking at the time. And how you regretted it after.”

“No more surprises,” said Zdorab. “I’m with you till I die.”

“Your oath is to my father,” said Nafai. “But I’m glad of your friendship, and you may be sure that you have mine.”

Alone with Shedemei, Nafai could allow the sores on his wrists and ankles to heal at last. “Who would have guessed,” he said.

“What?” she answered.

“That Zdorab’s mistake would end up accomplishing something that would have been impossible otherwise.”

“And what is that?”

“I expected that as soon as we reached Earth, Elemak would go out of control and we’d be at war. I think the Oversoul expected it, too. But now we’ve had the war, and I think the peace will hold.”

“Until your father dies,” said Shedemei pointedly.

“Father isn’t old yet,” said Nafai. “It gives us time. Who knows what might happen in the years to come?”

“I don’t want to be there,” said Shedemei.

“It’s a little late to decide that now,” said Nafai.

“I don’t want to be there for the conflict. For the fighting. I came here to do some gardening.” She laughed self-deprecatingly. “To tinker around with the plant and animal life of Earth. That’s the dream the Keeper sent to me. Not like you others. I’m just the gardener.”

“Just? You’ll be the most important person among us.”

“I lied to you too, you know, Nafai. When I told you that it would be safe for cousins to marry. Just like Zdorab, I held something back.”

“That’s all right,” said Nafai. “Everyone holds something back, whether they know it or not.”

“But your children—the consequences may be terrible.”

“I don’t think so,” said Nafai.

“Oh.” She grimaced. “So the Oversoul told me what to say?”

“Suggested it. Every word was true.”

Shedemei laughed sardonically. “Or at least as true as every
other
word of the Oversoul.”

“I trust him,” said Nafai.

“Trust her to say whatever is necessary to accomplish her purposes. That’s as far as she can be trusted,” said Shedemei.

“Ah, but you see, Shedya, the Oversoul’s purposes
are
my purposes. So I can trust him completely.”

She patted his cheek. “You may be technically about as old as I am by now, what with staying awake continuously during the voyage. But Nyef, I must say, you still have a lot to learn.”

With that she swung into place in her chamber. Nafai raised the side, locked it, then activated the suspension process. The lid slipped closed. He watched as she drifted to sleep in the airtight compartment. He was alone again.

I’m hurrying.

I have an idea. Just don’t talk to me for a little while. Let me go to sleep with only my own thoughts in my head.

I can handle it.

I wish you were better company, then.

I wish he were.

I’m just the puppet you want, is that it?

Let me go to sleep in peace, and maybe when I wake up I’ll be willing again.

The skyscreen in the library showed it, the globe of Earth, blue and white, with patches of brown and green here and there. Since they had slept through the launch, they had never seen a world like this, like a ball floating in the black of night.

“Like a moon,” said Chveya.

Oykib reached out and took her hand. She looked up at him and smiled. The last three and a half years had been both wonderful and excruciating, to know that he loved her, and yet to know that it was impossible to marry and have children during the voyage. They didn’t speak of what they felt—it was easier for both of them that way. The others had been just as discreet in their pairing up. But now, as they made their reconnaissance, orbitting the Earth again and again, reading the reports the instruments made, studying the maps, searching for the landing place, waiting for the Oversoul to make a decision, or for a dream from the Keeper to tell them what to do, it was impossible for Oykib to keep himself from thinking about Chveya, about what lay ahead for them. A new world, hard work, farming and exploring, and who knew what sort of dangers from disease or animals or weather—but set against all this was the thought of Chveya in his arms, of babies, of starting the cycle over again, of being part of the living world.