Earthfall (Homecoming) (9 page)

“What crime am I guilty of?” Emeez whispered.

“Don’t be petulant,” said the priestess. “As I said, this changes everything.”

“How?” asked Mother.

“Let’s just say that when the words of Zz are promised their fulfillment in the mouth of a girl, that girl will not be given to a common blunderer or a moral cretin.”

Oh, joy of joys, thought Emeez bitterly. I suppose that means I’ll be given to some truly spectacular miscreant.

“She’s six?” asked the priestess. “Two years till she’s a woman?”

“As far as we can guess such things,” said Mother. “It’s the choice of the gods, of course.”

The priestess stroked Emeez’s fur. As always, Emeez stiffened under the touch. People were always touching the crooked limbs or stumps of cripples, too, and she just hated it, even if it
was
supposed to bring them luck. But then she realized that the priestess wasn’t doing that hesitant little lucktouch. She was stroking Emeez’s fur with real affection, it seemed, and it felt good. “I don’t know if we’ve been right,” said the priestess, “to call that soft downy nothing hair beautiful. I think along with the hair of our women we might have lost something else. A closeness to the gods.”

Mother was too polite to disagree, but her very silence made it plain that
she
was not of that opinion.

The priestess was still talking. “Muf, the son of the war king, will be of age at about the same time as Emeez here.”

After a moment’s pause, Mother laughed. “Oh, you can’t mean that you’d….”

“A girl who hears the echo of Zz after all these centuries….”

Mother was still protesting. “But Muf won’t be happy to be given a….”

“Muf intends to be war king. He will marry as the gods direct. As far as I’m concerned, the gods have chosen here today.”

But it wasn’t the gods, thought Emeez. Or rather,
I
chose
him
.

“It’s too much for her,” said Mother. “She never expected such honor.”

“The girls who expect it,” said the priestess, “are the very ones who should never be given it.”

Finally Mother could believe it—or perhaps she finally realized that her very incredulity was making it plain to Emeez just what she thought of her. Whatever the reason, Mother finally squeaked in delight and embraced Emeez.

Before they left, the priestess had Emeez show her which god she had been looking at. She knew as soon as Emeez led her into that small side chamber which god it would be. “The big ugly one, right? No one has ever touched it.”

“But the workmanship is beautiful,” said Emeez.

“Yes, that’s true,” said the priestess. “No large hands like ours could ever make such intricate perfection. That’s why the gods use the skymeat to give them material shape. But this one—I always wondered what he would do, since no one has ever given him a chance to make a child or bring the rain or anything like that. He must have been waiting for you, child.” And again the old priestess stroked her hair.

I will be the wife of the new war king, if he turns out to be worthy to succeed his father. I’ll do everything I can to help him be worthy. And I’ll keep a beautiful room for him, with carpets and tapestries, baskets and robes more lovely than have ever been seen before. And when people see him, they won’t think, Look at that poor man, to have such a hairy wife. Instead they’ll say, the wife of the war king may be hairy, but she has surrounded our king with beauty.

I will never forget you for this great gift, she said silently to the beautiful ugly god.

“Will you move this god out into the open now?” asked Mother.

“No,” said the priestess. “Nor are either of you to tell anyone what god it was who put these words into the girl’s mouth. This god has never been touched. Let him stay that way.”

“I’ve never heard of treating a powerful god like that,” Mother protested.

“And I’ve never heard of an untouched god having any power,” said the priestess. “So we don’t have any precedents here. Therefore—we will do whatever works. And not touching this one seemed to be quite effective. That’s enough for me.”

And for me, said Emeez silently. Then, aloud, she repeated the first and clearest words that the god had said. “I accept you.”

“Save those words for your husband,” said Mother. “Now I think we’d better head home while there’s still time to make a good supper.”

All the way home, Mother kept repeating to her that she had to keep all these things to herself and not brag to anyone because until old Vleezh made some public announcement she could still change her mind. “Or she might die. She’s old. And you can’t imagine that any of the other priestesses would be the least bit impressed if I brought you in and said, But Vleezh said she was going to pair my Emeez with Muf, the son of the war king.”

No, of course I can’t imagine that, Mother. Who could?

In the back of her mind, though, one question kept nagging at her, one that Mother and the priestess both seemed to have ignored. What did it
mean
, to say that the lost ones were coming home? Who was coming? And how did they get lost? And why was it this strange ugly god who brought the news, out of all the thousands of gods in the holy cave?

I will watch and wait, thought Emeez. I think the god meant to accomplish more with these words than just to get me married off so far beyond all expectations. So I will try to see what the god’s message really meant, and when I do, I will proclaim it or whatever else the god wants me to do. It will be clear to me, when it happens, what I’m supposed to do.

She did not wonder how she knew that. Instead she began to speculate on what word to add to her name, for the wife of the war king’s son would never be left with just her weaning name. Emeezuuzh? Uuzh was the ending Mother had taken on her day of glory, when her basket was chosen for the burial of the old blood king. But that was a pretty name, a delicate name when a woman chose it. Emeez would have something stronger. She would have to think about that. There’d be plenty of time to make up her mind.

Zdorab had been born in the wrong era. He had never realized it until now. Oh, he knew he didn’t fit in where he grew up or where he lived in Basilica before Nafai gave him the chance to save his life by coming with him into the desert. But now, at the end of his second stint as Nafai’s co-teacher of the children on the starship
Basilica
, Zdorab knew where he truly belonged. The trouble was, the culture that might have valued him had been gone for forty million years.

Whoever it was that built this starship, with its fineness of design and craftsmanship, was to be admired, of course. It was only after living in it that Zdorab understood that he also loved their way of life. True, they were confined indoors, but as far as Zdorab was concerned, outdoor life was over-rated. He did not miss insects. He did not miss excessive heat and cold, humidity and dryness. He did not miss the defecations of animals and the smells of strange things cooking or overfamiliar things rotting.

But it wasn’t the absence of annoyances that made him relish the life aboard ship. It was the positive things. A comfortable bed every night. Daily bathing in a shower of clean water. A life centered around the library, around learning and teaching. Computers that could play as well as work. Music perfectly reproduced. Toilets that cleaned themselves and had no odors. Clothing that could be cleaned without laundering. Meals prepared in moments. And all of it while traveling at some unfathomable speed on a hundred-year voyage to another star.

He tried explaining it to Nafai, but the young man merely looked at Zdorab in puzzlement and said, “But what about trees?” Obviously Nafai couldn’t wait to get to the new planet, which would no doubt be another place with lots of dirt and bugs and plenty of sweaty manual labor to do. Zdorab had played obsequious servant all the way across the desert; he loved the fact that in this starship there
were
no servants, because all work was either done by machines and computers or was so simple and easy that anyone could do it—and everyone did.

And he loved teaching the children. Some of them were barely children anymore, six years into the voyage. Oykib had shot up to nearly two meters now, at the apparent age of fourteen. He was lanky, but Zdorab had seen him working out in the centrifuge and his body was wiry with hard tight muscles. Zdorab knew he was middle-aged by the fact that he could see that beautiful young body and feel only the memory of desire. If there was any mercy in nature, it was the fading of the male libido with middle age. Some men, feeling the slackening of desire, went to heroic—or criminal—lengths to get the illusion of renewed sexual vigor. But for Zdorab it was a relief. It was better to think of Oykib and his even-more-beautiful younger brother, Yasai, as students. As friends of his son, Padarok. As potential mates of his daughter, Dabrota.

My son, he thought. My daughter. Good Lord. Who would ever have guessed, during his years in clandestine love affairs in the men’s city outside Basilica, that I would ever have a son and a daughter. And if any man laid hands on either one of them without my consent, I think I’d kill him.

And then he thought: I’m a jungle creature after all.

He was going to sleep again today, as Shedemei wakened to take his place. They would overlap for a few hours—the Oversoul said there was life support enough for that—and it would be good to see her. She was his best friend, the only one who knew his secrets, his inward struggles. He could tell her almost everything.

But he could not tell her about the little program he had set up in a life support computer, one of those not directly part of the Oversoul’s memory. Just before scheduling the one wake-up call for midvoyage, the obvious one that the Oversoul had detected at once, Zdorab had written a program that ostensibly took a harmless inventory of supplies. It also checked, however, to see if it was exactly six and a half years into the voyage, and if it was, it would send a new version of the schedule file to the computer where the calendar was executed. The new version would call for Elemak, Zdorab, and Shedemei to be wakened thirty seconds later; then, after another second, the original copy of the schedule would be restored and the inventory program would rewrite itself to eliminate the extra subroutine. It was all very deft and Zdorab was proud of its cleverness.

He also knew that it was potentially lethal to the peace of the community and he kept intending, now that he was taking part in Nafai’s little plan, to get into the life support computer and eliminate it before it could go off. The trouble was that it was not as easy to get access to that computer, now that they were in flight. He had duties, and when those were done, the children were everywhere all the time and they would be bound to ask him what he was doing. He told himself that he was looking for a safe opportunity to make the change. Now he was only hours from going back to sleep, and he had found no such opportunity. Why not?

Because he was afraid, that’s why. That was the worm in his salad. Not that he was afraid for himself—the hunger for self-preservation was no longer as important to him as the need to protect his children. He had gone along with Nafai’s scheme, not because of dreams—those were for Shedemei and others that the Oversoul had bred to be especially receptive to them—but because he did not want
some
of the children to be given an advantage, and not his own. When Issib came up with the plan of having the adults help teach the children in shifts, Zdorab wouldn’t have dreamed of refusing to take part.

At the same time, though, he was afraid of what Elemak would do later on to take vengeance. When he woke up on Earth and found himself surrounded by these strong young men, all committed to Nafai’s cause, he would be so filled with hate that he would
never
forgive. There would be war, sooner or later, and it would be bloody. Zdorab didn’t want his children to suffer from that. Didn’t want them to have to take part, or even take sides. What better way to accomplish that than to prove his loyalty to Elemak by letting the wake-up call come through as planned?

Of course, Nafai and the Oversoul would have no problem figuring out who had done it—nobody else had the computer skills back on Harmony, and none of the children who had acquired those abilities during the voyage were likely to want to wake up Elemak. Hadn’t he heard Izuchaya—who had been so young at launch that she barely remembered Elemak—asking, “Why do we have to wake up Elemak at all, if he’s so bad?” “Because that would be murder,” Nafai had answered her, and then explained that even when you disagree with someone, they still have a right to live their life and make their own choices. The only time you have a right to kill someone is when they’re actually trying to kill you or someone you need to protect.

Someone you need to protect. I need to protect my children. And here’s the cold hard truth, Nafai: My children are no blood kin of yours. Therefore, even if we side with you, I can’t believe for a moment that you will ever be as careful of them, as loyal to them, as you are to your own children or your parents’ young children or your brother Issib’s children. I have to find a way to protect them myself, to make it so Elemak won’t hate them the way he will hate you and your children—even as I’ve helped them take advantage of your plan to become older and stronger than Elemak’s boys. That’s what a father does. Even if his wife wouldn’t approve of it.

Shedemei had different ideas of loyalty, Zdorab knew. She was an all-or-nothing kind of person. That’s because she hadn’t lived in the nightmare world of interweaving treachery that Zdorab had inhabited for so many years. Gaballufix’s constant plotting, in which other people’s trust was regarded as a weapon to be turned against them; the routine violence and corruption of life in the men’s village, where the ameliorating influence of women did not penetrate; and of course the relentless deception of the life of a man who loved men. No one can really be trusted, Shedemei, he said silently.

Not even the Oversoul. Especially not the Oversoul.

Zdorab’s only contact with the master computer was through the Index and, later, through the ordinary computers of the starship. He had no dreams, and as far as he knew the Oversoul neither cared about him nor heard any of his thoughts. How else could he have installed his clandestine wake-up program? The Oversoul had no particular use for him except to provide the other set of chromosomes for Shedemei to reproduce. Well, that was fine—Zdorab didn’t have all that much use for the Oversoul, either. He was firmly convinced that whatever it was the Oversoul wanted, it didn’t care much about the comfort and happiness of the human beings it manipulated. And because the Oversoul didn’t care about him, he was the one person in the whole community with privacy.

At the same time, in the back of his mind, Zdorab hoped that, in fact, the Oversoul
did
hear his thoughts and knew all about the wake-up call. It had probably already removed it, in fact; Zdorab hadn’t checked it for the same reasons that he hadn’t removed it himself. The Oversoul wouldn’t let anything dangerous happen during the voyage. Elemak wasn’t going to wake up until Earth. And when he did, Zdorab could truthfully say, “I left the wake-up call in place. The Oversoul must have found it.”

He silently rehearsed the words, shaping them with his lips and tongue and teeth, knowing even as he did it that Elemak wouldn’t believe him, or if he did he wouldn’t care.

They’re wrong to have brought me with their family, wrong to force me to choose between them in their deadly domestic quarrels.

He stood before Shedemei’s sleep chamber as the lid slipped back and her eyes fluttered open. She smiled weakly.

“Hi, brilliant and beautiful lady,” he said.

“To be flattered upon first waking is every woman’s fondest dream,” she said. “Unfortunately I’m still stupid from the drugs.”

“What drugs?” He helped her sit up before he unclamped and dropped the side of the chamber so she could get out.

“You mean I’m just naturally this mentally slow?”

She got up and clung to him, partly to support herself as she tried to get her legs working again in the low gravity, and partly as an embrace between friends. He responded, of course, and began telling her of all that the different children had accomplished since she had last been awake. “I think this may be the finest school that ever existed,” he said.

“And how convenient that the teachers are all put to sleep between terms,” answered Shedemei.

They spent the hours together talking about the children, especially their own, and about anything that came to Shedemei’s mind. But they did not talk about the one thing preying most on Zdorab’s mind, and Shedemei noticed something was wrong.

“What is it?” she asked. “You’re not telling me something.”

“Like what?” he answered.

“Something is worrying you.”

“My life is worry,” he said. “I don’t like climbing into the sleep chamber.”

She smiled thinly. “All right, you don’t have to tell me.”

“Can’t tell you what I don’t know myself,” he said, and since this contained a grain of truth—he didn’t know whether the Oversoul had removed his program or not—Shedemei’s truthsense allowed her to believe him and she relaxed.

A few hours later he said goodbye to the children in a ritual that they were all used to by now, since their teachers all came and went this way. Handshakes or hugs all around, depending on the child’s age; a kiss for his own children whether they liked it or not; and then Nafai and Shedemei escorted him to his chamber and helped him in.

As the drugs began to take effect, though, he was filled with a sudden panic. No, no, no, he thought. How could I have been so stupid? Elemak will never be loyal to me, no matter what I do. I have to change the program. I have to keep him from waking up and taking Nafai by surprise. “Nafai,” he said. “Check the life support computers.”

But the lid of the chamber was already closed, and he couldn’t see whether Nafai was even watching his lips, and before he could even move a hand, the drug overwhelmed him and he slept.

“What did he say?” Nafai asked Shedemei.

“I don’t know. Something was bothering him but he didn’t know what?”

“Well, maybe he’ll remember it when he wakes up,” said Nafai.

Shedemei sighed. “I always have that same anxiety, too, like I’ve forgotten to say something
very
important. I think it’s just one of the side effects of the suspension drugs.”

Nafai laughed. “Like when you wake up in the middle of the night with a very important idea from a dream, and you write it down and then in the morning it says, ‘Not the food! The dog!’ and you have no idea what that could possibly mean or why you once thought it was important.”

“The real dreams,” said Shedemei, “you don’t have to write down. You remember them.”

They both nodded, remembering what it felt like to have the Oversoul or the Keeper of Earth speak to them in their sleep. Then they returned to the children and set to work on the next part of their training.

Chveya was working with Dza on coaching some of the younger children through their exercises. They had learned years ago that everybody had to be supervised or they would start to slack off, even though Nafai had warned again and again that if they didn’t put in two hard hours every day in the centrifuge, they would reach Earth with bodies so slack and feeble that they would have to borrow Issib’s chair just to get around. So the younger children exercised with older children calling the times, and the older children worked with younger ones monitoring them. That way they never had peers “telling them what to do.” The system worked well enough.

Dza was still not Chveya’s friend—they really hadn’t that much in common. Dza was one of those people who couldn’t stand to be alone, who always had to surround herself with the hubbub of conversation, with eager gossip, with laughter and mockery. Chveya could see that, now that Dza wasn’t bossing them anymore, the younger girls genuinely liked her. It appeared to Chveya like a physical connection between them, and she could see how the younger girls brightened when they came into Dza’s presence—and how Dza brightened also. But Chveya could not enjoy being with them for long. And envy wasn’t the cause of it, either, though at times she
did
envy Dza her bevy of friends. All the constant chat, the rapidly shifting demands on her attention—it wore Chveya out very quickly, and she would have to go off by herself for a while, to surround herself with silence and music, to read a book continuously for an hour, holding the same thread of talk.