The Worthing Saga (39 page)

I do not consent to this.

But if you do not help us, you may be letting Mercy give himself in vain.

So Justice was not merely an observer, but the leader of all the world as they Watched in Mercy's mind.

Mercy dwelt now at the bottom of the sea, inside a cold and silent chamber where a mind had lived. Now the memories were in an unfathomable bubble, and Mercy had to go into the brain where they once had lived and dwell there, strike out all his own memories and all that he had learned from everyone else, and see what his mind did in the space where Jason once had been. If all went well, he would become Jason, and from him they could could learn what Jason would do when he awoke, how he would respond; but it was always less than perfect, this technique, because no one had ever been able to drive out all of his own memories, and leave the dead man's mind alone. Always there was something of the floater left, to distort the result. Justice's work was to measure the distortion, and to compensate.

But there was no distortion. They had not counted on how little Mercy loved himself. There was no memory, however deep, that he had to cling to to survive. There was no part of him that had to live on, no matter how much he willed to die. So as Justice searched for Mercy in the cold liquid granite, she found nothing. Only a stranger in Mercy's place. Only Jason Worthing, a poor crippled man who could see but could not speak.

It was already a long, long time, and still she had not found her brother. Where is he, demanded Mother. You must find him, for he can't go on much longer.

At last Justice cried out in despair, He isn't there, he's gone.

And in awe at Mercy's perfect gift, all of Worthing withdrew from Mercy's mind at once, having learned from Jason all they needed to know. Justice opened her eyes in time to see the stone go solid again, with Mercy's head still inside, his back arched, his hands clutching the surface. For a moment it seemed that he moved, that he was alive, still trapped and trying to get out. But it was only an illusion, caused by the pose he died in. His flesh was not flesh now, but also stone, and he was gone.

Justice searched inside herself for the balance, the perfect balance that should be there, but it was gone.

Lared stood over Justice's bed where she pretended to be asleep.

“You were giving me dreams,” he said. “You are not sleeping.”

Slowly she shook her head, and he saw, by the light of the candle that he held, tears seeping from the comers of her eyes.

Before he could speak to her again, there was a hand on his shoulder. He turned, and it was Jason. “She Watched our village, Jason.”

“Only the once,” he said. “After her brother floated the stone, she never Watched again.”

“But I remember that day. I saw myself in her memory, I saw her go inside me and it was as if I understood myself whole for the first time. Nothing that you showed me before, nothing was—”

“Everything else came from lesser minds than hers. What she sees, she understands.”

“All these months she's been with us, and I never knew her, never guessed.
She
is God, not you.”

“She was the least of the gods, if you want to call them that. But then at the end she was the greatest. She came to know me, you see. She insisted that she be the one to tend me when they raised me from the sea. I remember waking, with my ship going crazy with warnings—something was moving the ship, and it wasn't anything the poor ship's computer had met before. When we rested on the surface of the sea, I opened the door, and there was Justice, standing on the water in front of me, looking back at me with eyes as blue as mine, and I thought, My daughter. It was only a few days to me, then, since I left Rain and the children in the Forest of Waters. And this was what they had become. She hated me, of course.”

“Why? What had you done?”

“It was unfair. She knew that. But it made her the fairest judge of what I might have to teach them. If anyone had reason to disbelieve and doubt me, it was Justice. She showed me everything; they even let me watch them Watch, so that I saw through their eyes what they were doing in the world. It was beautiful, and kind, a world full of people devoting themselves to nothing but the service of mankind. I cursed them and told them that I wish I had been castrated at the age of ten before I spawned any such thing as them. I was quite upset, as I remember. And, as you can imagine, so were they. They couldn't believe that If loathed so much what they were doing. They could not understand, even though they could see into my mind, why I was angry. So I showed them. I said, Justice, let me take from you all memory of your brother's death. And she said—”

“No!” cried Justice from her bed. The word was not in Lared's language, but he needed no translation to understand it.

“Hypocrites, I said to them,” said Jason. “You dare to rob mankind of all its pain, yet treasure your own agonies. Who Watches you?”

“Who Watches you?” cried Jason.

No one, they answered. If we ever forgot our own pain, how could we care enough to protect
them
from
theirs
?

“Did you ever think that however much they railed against the universe or fate or God or whatever else, that they might not thank you for stealing from them all that makes them human?”

And they saw in Jason's mind the things he treasured most, the memories that were strongest, and they were all the times of fear and hunger, pain and grief. And they looked into their own hearts, and saw what memories had endured through all the ages of time, and they were memories of struggle and accomplishment, sacrifices like Mercy when he floated the stone and gave a perfect offering of himself, agonies like Elijah Worthing when he watched his wife cast herself upon the flames, even cruel Adam Worthing with his terror that his uncle would find him and punish him—again—these had lasted, while the simple contentment had not; They saw that this was what had made them good, even in their own eyes; and because they had left the rest of man no evils to overcome, they had robbed them of the hope of greatness, of the possibility of joy.

Full agreement did not come at once. It came only gradually, over the weeks and months. But finally, because they could see themselves through Jason's eyes, they decided that mankind was dead as long as they Watched, that men and women would only become human again with the possibility of pain.

“But how can we live?” they asked, “knowing of all the suffering that will come, knowing we can stop it, and yet withholding ourselves? That is more suffering than
we
can bear; we have loved them all too long and well.”

And so they decided not to live. They decided to finish what Mercy had begun, the perfect offering. Only two people in the world refused.

“You people are crazy,” Jason said. “I wanted you to stop controlling everything, I didn't ask you to kill yourselves.”

Some kinds of life are not worth living, they answered mildly. You're too uncompassionate to understand.

And as for Justice, she refused to stay because she wasn't worthy to die in Mercy's cause. It would be giving her more value than she was worth.

But you'll have to live among the people in their suffering, they said. It will destroy you, surely, to see their grief and yet not save them.

Perhaps, said Justice. But that is the price that Justice pays; that will balance me with Mercy, in the end.

So Jason and Justice took a starship to the only world outside of Worthing that Justice had ever known, as behind them the world of Worthing tipped inward toward its sun and spiraled down to die in fire.

Justice heard the deaths of a hundred million souls and bore it; felt the horror of the Day of Pain in Flat Harbor, and bore it; felt Lared's hatred as he learned of her power and that she yet did nothing, and bore it.

But now, lying on her bed, it was Sala's grief that struck too deep, Sala's suffering that she could not bear. She gave that moment to Lared as he watched, let him see her from the inside even at the moment of her pain.

“You see,” said Jason, “she is not like me. She isn't uncompassionate, after all. There's more of Mercy in her than she thought.”

Lared and Jason stood at Justice's bedside, and for the first time Lared did not fear her and did not hate her; for the first time he understood what lay behind her choice, and though he thought that it was wrong, he realized it was not Justice's fault.

“How could they decide wisely,” Lared whispered, “when they only had your mind to judge by?”

Jason shrugged. “I didn't lie to them. I only showed them the way things seemed to me. Remember, Lared—they didn't just take my word for it. It was only when they saw that they were taking away from others what they would not willingly give up themselves, that what mankind was missing then was the only thing that was worth remembering about the time before—”

“That's fine,” Lared said, “if you stand above mankind in a tower, looking down. But here, Jason, when you have the power to heal, and do not heal, I call that evil.”

“But
I
don't have that power,” Jason said.

At that moment someone screamed downstairs. Screamed in pain, again and again. It's Clany, thought Lared. But Clany's dead.

“Sala!” he shouted, and flew down the stairs, Jason after him.

Father was braving the flames to pull Sala from the hearthfire. There was no part of her that was not afire. Lared did not hesitate, but plunged his hands into the fire and together he and Father pulled her out. The pain of his own burnt flesh was excruciating, but Lared hardly noticed, for Sala writhed in his arms, screaming over and over, “Justice! Justice! Now! Now!”

“She was in the fire already when I woke!” Father said frantically.

Mother kept reaching frantically for her daughter, but shied away each time before she touched the charred flesh, lest she somehow add to Sala's pain.

Lared thought for a moment that her eyes were closed, but then realized that they were not. “She has no eyes!” he cried. And then he looked at the foot of the stairs and saw Justice standing there, her face a mask of anguish.

“Now! Now! Now!” cried Sala.

“How is she alive?” cried Father.

“God in heaven, not three days!” cried Mother. “Not like Clany, let her die now, not three days.”

And then Father and Mother were pushed aside, and Justice seized Sala, tore her from Lared's arms, and gave a wail so terrible that Lared could not stop himself from crying out at the pain of hearing it.

Then silence.

Not even Sala crying.

She is dead, thought Lared.

But then, as he watched, Sala blinked her eyes, and they were bright again, not the empty sockets Lared had seen a moment ago. As he watched, he saw the burnt skin flake from her body, leaving a pale, smooth, perfect layer of unburnt, untouched, unscarred flesh.

Sala smiled and laughed, threw her arms around Justice and clung to her. Lared looked down at his own arms, and they were healed, then reached out to Father and touched the bud of fingers blossoming on the stump where once his arm had grown in only a few minutes the arm was whole, as strong as ever.

Justice sat on the floor, Sala in her arms, weeping bitterly.

“At last,” Jason murmured.

Justice looked up at him.

“You're human after all,” Jason said.

You
are
good, Lared said to her silently. I was wrong. You are so good that you could not stop yourself, with the test that Sala set for you. There is more mercy in you than you thought.

Justice nodded.

“You didn't fail,” Jason said aloud to her. “You passed. And he leaned down and kissed her forehead. ”You wouldn't be my daughter if you had made any other choice.

For the small village of Flat Harbor, the Day of Pain was over. It would not be as it was before. Justice played no tricks on memory, and death itself she would not hinder, but the pain was at an end in Flat Harbor, and would be as long as she lived.

It was a spring day, and the snow was gone; The men and women were out among the hedges and the fields, replanting bushes that the snow had moved, harrowing the stubbled fields, getting ready for the plow.

The last of the logs were bound together in a raft, to be floated down the river to Star Haven, where they would fetch a good price, especially the great mast tree in the middle of the raft. Jason and the tinker stepped aboard. The raft shifted slightly, but did not rock for long. It was sturdy, and the tent they had pitched already in the middle of the raft would make a pleasant house for the two-week river journey. The tinker had his pots and pans, his tin and all his tools carefully arranged with floats in case the raft broke up—he could not afford to lose all that. Jason carried only one thing with him, a small iron-bound chest. He opened it only once, to be sure all nine closely written sheets of parchment were neatly rolled and stacked lightly within.

“Ready?” asked the tinker.

“Not quite yet,” said Jason.

They waited for a moment, and then Lared came running onto the bank, carrying a hastily packed bag over his shoulder and shouting, “Wait! Wait for me!” When he saw that they were still against the shore he stopped and grinned foolishly. “Got room for one more?”

“If you promise not to eat much,” said Jason.

“I decided not to stay here. Father's arm is whole, and they don't need me much, they never did, and I thought you might need someone along who can read and write...”

“Just get aboard, Lared.”

Lared stepped carefully into the boat and set down his bag beside the iron chest. “Will they use a printing press and make a real book of this?”

“If they don't, they won't get paid,” said Jason, and he and the tinker poled the raft away from shore.

“It's a good thing to know they'll all be safe,” Lared said, looking back at the villagers in the fields and hedges.

“I hope you don't think that you'll be safe with
me
,” said Jason. “I may be getting along in years, but I intend to live. I intend to sleep as little as possible, for one thing. And I hope you remember how many things there are that I cannot do.”