The Worthing Saga (37 page)

And when she was done with him, he was no longer an irresistible tyrant jaded by so many crimes that he hardly noticed them and destroyed by mere habit; Now he was a ruler who feared nothing but his own desires, and avoided his lust for cruelty with the same fear that once he had devoted to the memory, now lost, of Uncle Matthew.

No, not lost. For his memories, the most vivid of them, lived in Faith's own mind. The stone had given her back herself, but nothing could take from her Adam's past.

They were surrounded by people, courtiers and bureaucrats who had come to marvel at the' sight of the blue-eyed tyrant and the girl who stood before him, matching him gaze for gaze, hour after hour, in utter silence, while they hardly breathed. What power did she have over Jason's Son? What death would this result in? Who would suffer?

But then it was over, and Adam smiled at her and said, “Go in peace, cousin,” and she turned and walked away and they did not see her again, and Adam forbade them to look for her.

It was a clumsy job she did—for years afterward there were curious lapses in Adam's memory, and sometimes he rebelled against the life of self-restraint that he believed that he had led. But on the whole, he was healed, and all of Worthing's world knew it, bit by bit. The monster in the Son of Jason had been tamed; the world could bear his rule.

Amos was waiting for her when she returned to Hux. He met her at the city gate, and walked with her out into the orchards that organized the hill into neat columns and rows. “Well done, he said.”

“I was afraid,” she said, “that you would stop me.”

He shook his head. “We all hoped for you, child. Only you of all of us could understand him well enough to heal him. If you had failed, we would have had no hope short of killing him, and that would taint us forever.”

“So I was part of your plan from the start?”

“Of course,” said Adam. “There are no accidents in the world anymore.”

Faith thought about that for a while, trying to discover why she was sad that the accidents, the agonies were over. It is part of the Adam in me, she finally decided, and put it behind her, and worked with the others to spread the healing influence of Worthing farther and farther out into the world. I will heal the world, and there will be no more accidents anymore.

“The story is almost dull from there on, Lared. Stories of good people doing good works are never very thrilling. For the first many hundreds of years Adam's descendants used their powers to learn the true needs and desires of their subjects and make sure they had good government and were treated kindly; in the meantime, unknown to Adam's family, the descendants of Matthew and Amos watched an ever-growing portion of the world, sparing them from pain, removing from their minds the memory of grief, healing the sick, calming the angry, making the lame walk and the blind see. Then, in the Great Awakening, they made themselves known to Adam's kin, and the groups joined their work together, and intermarried. By the time they woke me and brought me up from the bottom of the sea, every living soul on Worthing was descended from me. They conquered the world by marriage.”

“When the starships came at last from the other worlds, they saw it as the challenge their power had been created for. They began to watch all the worlds of men. The ships came back to worlds like yours, and told of what they had found on Worthing's world, the lost colony, and how it meant the end of pain. That's when the ritual of fire and ice began here, Lared. And since that day
nothing
, nothing in all the universe of men, has changed.”

Lared sat at the writing desk, tears dropping onto the page. “Until now,” he said. “Your children could have made all mankind their slaves, but they chose to be kind instead—why did they undo it all? Why did they stop? Why are you glad of it?”

“Lared,” Jason said. “You don't understand. They
did
make all mankind their slaves. They just kept them happier than any master did before.”

“We were not slaves. And my father had two arms.”

“Write the story that you know so far, Lared. We have to finish soon—winter's almost over, and they'll need you in the forest and the fields again. Finish the book, and then I'll leave you as you wanted me to.”

“How much more is there, after this?”

“One more dream,” said Jason. “The tale of a man named Mercy and his sister, Justice. And how between them they undid the pattern of the universe. Maybe when it's over, you'll not hate me anymore.”

The wind was out of the southeast, warm and dry. The ice on the river broke up in the night; great rafts of ice floated downstream all day. The snow was still white with flecks of ash from the forge fire, but underneath it Lared heard the running of water. He tossed a bale of hay into every stall, forked it loose, and checked the sheep for lambing. The time was getting near for more than one of the ewes; And hard as the winter had been, there was still hay enough from last summer to last two more months. A good year for crops and animals. Not so good for men.

The tools stood ready for the summer's work; soon it would be time to spade and ditch the hedges and take the daughter to the peas patch and the harrow to the fields. Today is warm enough, Lared decided, and he let the geese out into the yard. It was a measure of how much had changed since fall that he didn't even think to ask Father if it was time.

Mother was pregnant. Mother was going to have a little baby and Father was certain it was his. Well, it might be, Lared thought. I wonder who her lover is? It occurred to him to wonder if it might be the tinker—Mother liked him well enough. But no, he had no opportunity. Indeed, when did anyone have time? With the women always visiting and Father never far away, how could it be at home? And Mother ran no errands, except when she worked in company of other women at some cloth work or to carry grain to the mill—

The miller? Surely Mother could not prefer him to Father; No, impossible.

“That's not a very worthy line of thought,” said Jason.

Lared turned to him. He stood in the doorway of the barn, silhouetted in the sunlight. “I'm going out to mark the hedges,” Lared said. “Do you know the work, or does Father need you in the forge?”

“I need you at the book,” Jason said. “That's spring work you're thinking of, and the book's not done.”

“The spring work needs doing in the spring. That's why we call it spring, work. It's spring, and so I'm doing it. Whatever the value of whatever you paid to Father and Mother, it isn't worth a winter with no crop. Starving to death is possible these days, you know.”

“I'll come with you to the hedges.”

They each took saw hooks with them, and walked the rows. The snow was wet and slippery underfoot, and the south-facing slopes of the hedge banks were plain mud, the snow already gone from them. Lared stopped at a plant that was broken from the weight of the winter's snow, so it lay over half into the hedge-road. You hardly need to mark one like this, but you do it anyway, Lared said. “When they come along to do your rows, sometimes they're tired and they don't much like the landmaster by then, and anything without its twist of straw gets left, even though they know they have to do it over.” He plaited a straw on the outmost branch and they went on, cutting off branches that were broken from the stem, marking plants that needed to be rooted or moved back into line.

“Mother's pregnant,” Lared said. “I know you know it, but I thought you might be able to tell a bit about the father.”

“Same as yours.”

“Is that the truth?”

“Yes,” Jason said. “Justice says so. She knows how to tell. In the old days, she would have stopped it being born if it were a bastard. It was one of the ways they kept life simpler.”

“Why should she have a child at all? She has two.”

“With no premature death before the Day of Pain, Lared, what would have happened to the world if every couple had more than its two? All the women who aren't virgins or too old are pregnant, Lared. Most of their children will survive. But look forward to a hundred children underfoot before two years are out. You'll have to make this land produce much more, or some will die.”

“The way it used to be” Lared said. “I'm an expert now on how things used to be. I think I've lived more in your history than I've lived in my own life.”

“I know you have. Has it changed you?”

“No.” Lared stopped walking and looked around him. “No, except they hedges have no mystery anymore I know there's nothing on the other side. When I was a childt I used to wonder, but not now.”

“You're growing up.”

“I'm getting old. I've lived too many lifetimes this winter. This village is so small compared to Heaven City.”

“That's its greatest virtue.”

“Think that Star Haven would have need of a country-born scribe?”

“You write as well as any man.”

“If I can find a man to help Father at the forge, or perhaps another blacksmith to take his place there, and let him run the inn—then I'm going. Maybe not Star Haven. There are other places.”

“You'll do well. Though I think you'll miss Flat Harbor more than you think you will.”

“What about you? When you leave? Will you miss this place?”

“More than you know,” said Jason. “I've come to love it here.”

“Yes, you would. A nice place to find pain.”

Jason said nothing.

“I'm sorry. It's coming on spring and Father hasn't got his arm and even with you helping at the forge it isn't the same. The farm is on my back now, and I don't want it. It's your fault, you know. If there were any justice, you'd stay and bear the burden of it yourself.”

“Oh, no, not at all,” said Jason. “Sons have always taken over when their fathers faltered, and daughters have always done the same for mothers. This is the natural way now. This is Justice. What you had before was pure mercy. You never did a thing to deserve it, so don't complain now that it's taken away.”

Lared turned away from him and went on up the hedge. They worked in silence till the job was done.

When they got home, Father was in the big copper tub, taking a bath. Lared saw at once that he was angry to see him. He couldn't understand why—Lared had seen Father bathing naked since he was as little as he could remember, Mother pouring the hot water into the tub and Father crying out, “What, do you want to boil my balls off?” Then Lared saw how Father tried to hide his stump behind his body. He must have waited for his bath till Lared was gone hedging, and because of Jason's help Lared had come back too soon. “Sorry,” Lared said. But he didn't leave the room. If he had to hide forever from his father's bath, he'd soon be afraid to come indoors, and Father would bathe but once a year at most. Instead Lared walked to the kitchen and took a crust of old bread from the bin and dipped it into the porridge simmering before the fire.

Mother slapped playfully at his hand. “Will you rob the dinnerpot, and the porridge not yet half cooked?”

“It's already delicious,” Lared said, his mouth full. Father had stolen porridge that way a thousand times before. Lared knew that Mother wouldn't mind.

But Father minded. “Keep your hands out of the food Lared,” he said gruffly.

“All right, Father,” Lared said. No point in arguing. He'll do it again, and Father would get used to that, too.

Father arose from the tub, water dripping. Almost at once Sala, who had been playing silently nearby, ran to him and looked up at the naked stump. “Where are the fingers?” Sala asked.

Father, embarrassed, covered the stump with his hand. It was sadly funny, that he made no effort to hide his loins, but only tried to hide what wasn't even there.

“Hush, Sala,” Mother said sharply.

“There should be fingers,” Sala said. “It's spring.”

“There'll be no new growth on this stump,” Father said. And now, the shock of it over, he took his hand away and began to towel himself with a thick wool cloth. Mother came over to towel his back, and on the way she gave Sala a push. “Run along, Sala. Go away.”

Sala cried out as if in terrible pain or grief.

“What is it? I didn't push you so hard, girl.”

“Why didn't you do it!” Sala screamed. “Where is it!”

Only when Justice appeared at the foot of the stairs did they realize what Sala meant. Sala ran to her. “You can do it! I know you can do it! So where is it? You said you loved me! You said you loved me!”

Justice only stood there, looking at Father, who held the towel in front of him. Then, defiantly, he thrust the towel into Mother's hands and stepped out of the tub toward Justice. “What have you promised the child?” he asked. “In our house we keep our promises to children.”

But Justice didn't answer. As usual, Sala did. “She can put an arm back where you lost it,” Sala said. “She told me in my mind. I've dreamed of it, I saw it open like a flower, all live fingers back again.”

Jason stepped between them.

“Stay out of this, Jason. That woman's been living like a ghost in my house all winter, I want to know what she promised to my daughter.”

“Put on some trousers,” Jason said.

Father looked at Jason coldly for a long moment, then reached for his longshirt and put it on.

“Justice didn't promise anything to Sala. But Sala still saw— what Justice would like to do, if she weren't bound.”

“Put a hand back on my stump? Only God could do that. And God is gone.”

“That's right,” Jason said.

“How does Sala know what that woman thinks? Or does she talk when they're alone?”

“When one of Justice's people loves someone, she can't hide her thoughts from them. She never meant to deceive your daughter, or to disappoint her. What Sala saw is forbidden.”

“Forbidden. Bound. But if she weren't bound and forbidden, does she have the power to heal my arm?”

“We came here,” Jason said, “to write a book, with Lared's help. He'll finish it tomorrow, and then we'll go.” He walked to Justice and pushed her gently back up the stairs. Sala stayed at the bottom step, crying. Father pulled his trousers on, and Lared sat before the fire, watching the flames trying to escape up the chimney, always dying before they quite made it out.