Earthfall (Homecoming) (18 page)

“We once fled from this world in shame and fear,” said Chveya. “We once fouled it and slaughtered each other.”

She did not need to add the fear that it would happen again. They all knew that the time of real peace would be over, that even if the oath to Volemak held, the tension would still be alive underneath the civility. And how long would Volemak live? Then war might come again. Human blood might once again be shed on Earth.

Oykib heard Chveya speaking to the Oversoul. Why did you bring us here, when we’re no better and no wiser than the ones who left?

“But we
are
,” said Oykib. “Better and wiser, I mean.”

She turned to him, her eyes wide. “What is it that you do? Back in the crisis, you spoke so knowledgeably. Of what the Oversoul wanted. Of what Nafai wanted, when you hadn’t even spoken to him. What is it you do?”

“I eavesdrop,” he said. “It’s been that way all my life. Anything that’s said on the channels of the Oversoul, I hear. What he says. What you say.”

She looked horrified. Is this true? she was saying to the Oversoul. That’s horrible!

“Now you know why I’ve never told anyone. Though I certainly showed it clearly enough during the crisis. I’m surprised no one guessed.”

“What I say to the Oversoul—it’s so private.”

“I know that,” said Oykib. “I didn’t ask to hear it. It just came to me. I grew up knowing a great deal more than any child should know. I understand what’s going on in others’ lives to a degree that—well, let’s just say that I’d much rather take people at face value than to know what really troubles them. Or, with the ones who never speak to the Oversoul, what things he has to do to keep them from doing the worst things they desire. It’s not a pleasant burden to carry.”

“I can imagine,” said Chveya. “Or maybe not. Maybe I can’t imagine. I’m not even trying to imagine right now. All I’m doing is trying to remember what I’ve said to the Oversoul, what secrets you know.”

“I’ll tell you one secret I know, Veya. I know that of all the people on this starship, no one is more honest and good than you, no one more loving and careful of other people’s feelings. Of all the people on this ship, there’s no one who is so at peace with herself, no one who adds less to the burden of shame and guilt that I carry around with me. Of all the people on this ship, Veya, you are the only one that I would be glad to be close to forever, because all your secrets are bright and good and I love you for them.”

“Some of my secrets are
not
bright and good, you liar.”

“On the contrary. The evil secrets you’re ashamed of are so mild and pathetic that to
me
, having seen real evil to a degree I hope you’ll never understand, to me even your darkest, most shameful secrets are dazzling.”

“I think,” said Chveya, “that you’re hinting around that you want to marry me.”

“As if it could ever be a secret to you, who senses the connections between people just like Aunt Hushidh. Talk about invasion of privacy.”

“I do know your secret, Okya,” she said, smiling, facing him, putting her arms around his waist, holding his hips against hers. “I know what you want. I know how much you love me. I see us bound by bright cords, tied so tightly that there’s no escape ever as long as either of us lives. You are my captive, and I’m never going to have mercy and let you go.”

“Those bonds aren’t bondage at all, Veya,” said Oykib. “They’re freedom. This whole voyage I’ve been in captivity because I couldn’t have you. When we step out on that new world, that old world, and I’m tied to you at last, openly, so we can begin our life together—that’s when I will truly be unbound.”

“My answer is yes,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “I heard you tell the Oversoul.”

There were many things for a young man to do, many duties that the community required of him, even if he
was
already married, and to a remarkable woman like Iguo. Because of pTo’s extraordinary advancement, people looked to him for achievement, looked for him to be a model of young manhood.

Well, perhaps not always. Many of them looked to pTo for disappointment at best, scandal at worst. He was too young. Iguo had only married a mere boy like that because her great grandmother Upua had done the same with Kiti. It had become something of a family tradition for the women of that line, to marry a man who was too young—and pTo was no Kiti, as many were quick to point out.

“You’re no Kiti, you know,” said pTo’s own otherself, Poto.

“As well for you I’m not,” said pTo. “
His
otherself was dead the year he made his sculpture and was chosen by Upua.”

“You can’t go doing crazy things. They’re not going to forgive you anything. If you’re brilliant they’ll say you’re arrogant. If you falter, they’ll say you overreached. If you’re friendly they’ll say you’re condescending. If you’re aloof they’ll say you’re arrogant.”

“So I might as well do what I want.”

“Just remember that it’s my name you’re dragging through the mud. If
you’re
a madman, what am I?”

“A helpless victim of my lunacy,” said pTo. “I want to go to the tower.”

Resting on the stout limb of a tree, they were watching over a flock of fat turkeys. The turkeys themselves were docile enough, too stupid to know the fate that the people had in store for them. The danger was from devils, who liked nothing better than to steal from the herds of the people. Lazy creatures, devils never did their own work except digging their nasty little holes in the ground and carving out the hearts of trees. During the birthing season, they came in force, stealing sometimes as many as a third of each year’s newborns—that was why so many people had lost their otherself. During the rest of the year, though, it was the flocks and herds they were after.

“We’re on watch,” said Poto.

“We’re watching the wrong thing,” pTo insisted. “The Old Ones at the tower are the most important creatures in the world.”

“Boboi says they’re our enemies.”

“Why was my wife’s ancestor shown the face of an Old One, then, if they aren’t to be our friends?”

“To warn us,” said Poto.

“The Old Ones know secrets, and if we don’t make friends with them, they’ll give those secrets to the devils. Then we really
will
have them as enemies.”

“It’s forbidden,” said Poto, “and we have responsibilities here, and no matter how young you might have been when you got married, you are
not
Kiti.”

pTo knew that his otherself was right. He usually was. But pTo couldn’t bear to concede the point, because he knew that if he didn’t learn about the Old Ones, no one else would. No one else
dared
. “I’m not Kiti,” said pTo, “but I also am the only man who doesn’t fear that he’ll be rejected by all the women because of flouting Boboi’s ban on visiting the Old Ones.”

“You’re not the only married man.”

“You know what I mean. The older men don’t
want
to go. They get a little slow, a little fat. It’s too dangerous for them to go down there into the heart of devil country.”

One of the turkeys decided, as turkeys will, that it was urgently required to be somewhere out in the brush, and it suddenly started gobbling and running. Without a word, Poto swooped down from the limb and flew in front of the bird, shouting. The bird stopped, gazing stupidly at the man beating his wings in the air in front of him. Poto dropped to the ground, then jumped into the air again and, on the leap, kicked the turkey in the face. It screeched, turned around, and trotted back to the herd.

When Poto rejoined him on the limb, pTo couldn’t resist. “What you just did to that turkey is what Boboi is doing to all the men.”

Poto sighed. “Give me a little peace, pTo.”

“What I’m saying, Poto, is that I’m going. You can tend the herd alone.”

“We herd in twos because a man is needed to watch the turkeys, and another to watch the man so he isn’t taken by surprise.”

“Then come with me,” said pTo. “I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m afraid to go alone.”

“I’m afraid to go at all, and you should be, too.”

“Then goodbye, my otherself, my bettermind. Perhaps my Iguo will marry you after I’m dead.” In the old days, they would both be married to her already. Sometimes pTo wished it had not changed.

“Yes, everything’s a poem to you,” said Poto scornfully, but pTo was not deaf to the emotion behind his hard words.

“My death, when it comes, will be one that the poets sing of.”

“Better to have a life that your children remember with joy than a death that the poets remember with song.”

“Hard to believe you’re not an old man, when you quote nonsense like that.”

“Go if you must.”

pTo immediately leapt from the branch. Moments after his glide began, he rose up, circling higher than the treetops. He shouted down at Poto. “Watch your back, Obedient One!”

“No!” shouted Poto, truly angry. “I won’t do your work for you!”

His words stung, but pTo flew on, down the valley. He knew that others would see him, and he knew that while Poto was high enough up the valley to be in little danger, others would say that he was so unnatural as not to love his otherself. Let them say what they would. Boboi was wrong. There was great danger in ignoring the Old Ones. pTo
would
study them, learn about them, perhaps enter into conversation with them. Learn their language. Become their friend. Bring back their ancient secrets. Better to bring knowledge back to the people than mere trinkets. Their trove of Old One artifacts was not large, but it had taken many generations to collect it. All of it was worthless, because none of it meant anything. It was knowledge that was needed, secrets that must be told. Not to the devils, either. To us.

It wasn’t far. pTo wasn’t even tired when the tower came into view. He had seen it before, from afar, and marveled at it every time. Who could shape a thing as smooth and tall as that? Like sunlight on the water, it was so bright, and the trees looked like bushes bowing down to worship it.

Why had the Old Ones come to dwell among the devils, and not among the people? Was it possible that the Old Ones were hellfolk and not from the gods at all? Yet they had not burst upward from the ground. They came from the sky. How then could they be hellfolk?

They could be hellfolk because they rested their tower right beside a stand of thick, ancient trees. The signs of a devil city were all around. Dead trees here and there; depressions here and there from old tunnels that had given way; and nearby, the rocky hills that held miles of caves for their obscene cannibalistic worship. The Old Ones must have seen all this, must have known, and yet they built their own village where the devils could watch them without leaving their holes. Why would the Old Ones do this, if they didn’t intend to befriend the devils? They probably already had. It was already too late.

But if it
is
too late, then I’ll see signs of their alliance, I’ll get some idea of what the danger is, and I’ll come home and report. When the danger is clear enough, they’ll stop listening to Boboi. But then we’ll come down here for war instead of learning, and the Old Ones will probably strike us out of the sky with magic. The Old Ones live in a tower that stands on a foundation of fire. Even the greatest warrior of the people would be no more irritating to them than a gnat.

It must not be war. It must be friendship. I must find a way to make it friendship.

The devils had no doubt already noticed him. Flight was the salvation of the people, but it was also their bane, at least in the daytime. They could leap to the sky to escape an enemy; but their enemy could look to the sky to watch them approach. Much had been made of the difference: The people were open and honest, the devils stealthy and deceptive. The people lived in the realm of the sun and stars, the devils in the realm of the worms and grubs. The people were as light as air, and therefore spiritual, akin to the gods; the devils were heavy and plodding, and therefore earthy, akin to stone.

But it didn’t change the fact that if a devil once got its hands on a man, it could break any of his bones as easily as snapping a twig. There was no fighting the devils hand to hand. One thrust with a spear, that’s all a man would ever get. Then he either had to fly or die. He couldn’t even lift a very heavy burden—not even a stone to drop on a devil’s head, or at least not a stone large enough to cause harm.

Couldn’t even lift his own child when the child was at that awkward age, too large to carry in flight, too young yet to fly. So it was at that time of year that the devils came, and parents had to make the terrible choice: Which child the two of them would carry to safety. Some were able to get back in time to save the second. Some were lucky enough to have older children who had not yet mated, who could take the other twin to safety. That’s how Poto had survived, because he and pTo were thirdborn. Rare indeed was the firstborn whose otherself was still alive.

So the devils were watching him, wondering why he came. Salivating, too, no doubt, at the thought of having his meat between their teeth. Well, pTo was young and quick enough that no one was going to take him. He was still light enough to perch on far branches that the devils couldn’t climb on without shaking them. His ears were still so keen that he could hear the sound of the fingers digging into the bark of the tree. There was danger if he walked into a trap, but if he was careful he would be safe.

Then pTo had a troubling thought: Every man or woman taken by the devils must have thought exactly the same thing, right up to the moment when they realized they were wrong.

The Old Ones’ village was very small, in terms of numbers, but huge in terms of size. Their houses were monstrously large. Whole trees had been felled and split to make the walls and roofs, except for the few buildings made of strange substances that pTo had never seen before. It was hard to make sense of what the buildings were for. The large one must be a dormitory—but then, why was there only one? Did their unmated males and females sleep in the same house? Unthinkable.

He chose his vantage point—a slender branch, sturdy enough to provide a good launch for flight, with many leaves to keep him from the Old Ones’ view. He inspected the trunk of the tree, but it was thin enough that the devils couldn’t have hollowed it yet, so he didn’t have to worry about ambush through a hidden door in the tree. For a devil to get to him it would have to climb the outside of the trunk, and pTo would hear it.

Unless he
didn’t
hear it, or unless they
could
hollow a tree that thin.

pTo ignored his own fears and settled down to watch. He watched all day, and by sundown he had learned many strange new things. The most amazing thing was that all the adults seemed to be married, each couple dwelling in their own house. The largest building was used during the day by a couple of adults and all the young children; obviously the Old Ones were holding school. But indoors? Closing their children off from the world in order to teach them about it made no sense to pTo.

Another thing pTo learned was that everyone lived in the buildings made of wood; the buildings made of that strange, smooth substance were only for storage or some more arcane purpose, for these buildings were rarely visited, and then only to fetch a tool or some other item, or return it to its place.

The Old Ones kept some animals in pens, but very few, and they were strange. A pair of them looked like goats, but they were huge. A pair of them looked like cows, but they were tiny. And there were dozens of wolves—or at least they barked and whined and howled like wolves—and they ran free among the Old Ones. Friends of wolves! What kind of creatures were these Old Ones? Didn’t they fear for their babies’ safety? Or were their babies born strong? No, not at all: pTo could see that a couple of the Old Ones carried babies with them in slings, and the babies looked completely helpless.

At first pTo thought—with disappointment—that all the children were alone. It was only late in the afternoon that he realized that two of the little ones were identical, and had the same parents. They did have otherselves! And yet the two of them weren’t always together—that was why pTo hadn’t realized they were not the same child until late in the day. He thought about this: only one pair out of all the children. Had the Old Ones been such calamitously unlucky parents that all the other pairs had been broken? Or was it possible that only some of their children were born in pairs, and all the others simply came as singles? What were they, then—animals?

Time to think about that later. When he had learned their language, he could perhaps find a way to ask such indelicate questions. For now, though, he could only watch. But particularly he would watch the pair, to see how they could go through childhood so often apart from each other. Are they so much stronger than we are, pTo wondered, or do they simply lack real affection?

During the day he noticed that most of the adults spent a great deal of time in the large cleared area, where they had marked the earth in many rows, as if loosening the clay to make a giant sculpture—though the soil here was loose, and would never hold together if they tried to shape it. But after watching for several hours, it dawned on pTo that the furrowed soil was quite possibly just an early stage of the four strange meadows, each with grass of a different height. For there, too, the roots of the grasses seemed to grow in rows. There were other areas, too, where plants seemed to have been intentionally placed, and from one of them a couple of Old Ones went to gather melons, which were then cut open and shared with the workers in the middle of the day.

This was the first secret pTo learned from the Old Ones, that instead of remembering from year to year where the best plants grew, and taking care to leave an offering of fruit and roots in the earth so the Mother would give back new plants the next year, the offerings could be taken away from their original rooting place and herded together like turkeys or goats, so they could be watched over and cared for all at once, by only a few men and women. Of course, there would be danger in this, too—all the devils would have to do is find an artificial meadow like this, and then lie in wait until the gatherers came. So it might be that the people couldn’t use this particular secret of the Old Ones. But maybe they could.