Earthfall (Homecoming) Read online

  “Can’t you loosen the cord?” Chveya said. “You don’t have to twist him up like that.”

  “No, I don’t have to,” said Elemak. “But I want to. After all, I’m evil and terrible and violent.” He eyed her steadily. “The Index, Chveya, or your mother goes down on the floor beside him. It doesn’t hurt him, not really, because the cloak heals him, but it won’t heal her.”

  Chveya could feel how Mother stiffened beside her. “You won’t,” said Chveya.

  “Won’t I? Since you and Oykib and Father have already got everybody hating me, it won’t make things any harder for me. And if I prove that I can treat a woman just as badly as a man, maybe I won’t have to put up with any more interference from big-mouthed little bitches like you.”

  “Tell him,” said Father. His voice sounded like defeat.

  She had heard it from his own mouth. There was nothing more to accomplish by resisting. “I’ll take you,” said Chveya. “It’s in the centrifuge. You’ll have to wait until it spins down, though. You can’t get it out while it’s moving.”

  “Inside the works, then?” Elemak said. “All this bother—and I would have thought of it eventually anyway. All right, get out, all of you. I’m locking this door behind me, and I’ll post a continuous watch here, so don’t even imagine that you can sneak down here and untie him. You’re lucky I haven’t killed him already.”

  For a moment Chveya wondered: Why hasn’t Elemak already killed him? He tried before, didn’t he? It has to be the cloak. Father can’t be killed, not that easily. Not while he’s inside the ship, or even near it. Elemak probably can’t even touch him, let alone do violence to him, not unless Father permits it. And if Elemak tried to kill him, it might not even require a voluntary response on Father’s part to strike back. The cloak would probably lash out automatically. Or maybe the Oversoul controls it. But that’s automatic, too, isn’t it? Because the Oversoul is really just a computer.

 

  Chveya blushed. She let Elemak herd her and the others out of the room, remembering only at the last moment to call out, “Father, I love you!”

  At first Elemak insisted on getting the Index out while the centrifuge was still moving, but when he saw for himself that the Index could not possibly be removed without running a serious risk of dropping it and breaking it under the wheels, he glumly waited while the machine ran down. Then, with it stopped, he sent Obring into the opening to get it. Chveya understood why. Elemak dared not get completely down into the opening, because he then couldn’t be sure that someone wouldn’t slam the door shut. He could get out soon enough, through one door or another—there were openings leading from the roadway out into the rest of the ship—but not before somebody could make it to Father and untie him. He couldn’t trust anyone now. So it was Obring who went down through the maintenance hole, and Obring who handed up the cloth-wrapped Index to Elemak.

  “I can’t believe she got it in there while the thing was moving,” Obring said.

  Elemak didn’t respond, but Chveya was defiantly proud of the compliment. She had done well. And even though Oykib, for whatever reason, had told Elemak almost at once who had hidden the Index, she had managed to weaken Elemak’s position and visit her father as the price of telling where it was.

  Now Elemak lifted off the cloth and held the Index in his hands.

  Nothing happened.

  He turned to Issib. “How does it work?” he demanded.

  “Like that,” said Issib. “Just what you’re doing.”

  “But it’s not doing anything.”

  “Of course it’s not,” said Issib. “The Oversoul controls it, and he’s not speaking to you.”

  Elemak held it out to Issib. “You do it, then. Make it do what I tell you, or Hushidh ends up with Nafai on the storeroom floor.”

  “I’ll try, but I don’t think the Oversoul will be fooled just because I’m the one holding it. It’s still not going to submit to you.”

  “Shut up and do it,” said Elemak.

  Issib sank lightly to the floor and received the Index as Elemak laid it in his lap. He put his hands on it. Nothing happened.

  “You see?” said Issib.

  “What usually happens?” asked Elemak. “Could it just be slow to respond?”

  “It’s never slow,” said Issib. “It’s just not going to work while the starmaster is not in control of the ship.”

  “Starmaster,” said Elemak, as if the word were poison in his mouth.

  “We’re going to run lower and lower on oxygen,” said Issib. “The ship can only break up carbon dioxide so fast, and we have too many people breathing.”

  “What you mean is that the Oversoul is trying to use the oxygen supply to force me to surrender.”

  “It’s not the Oversoul,” said Issib. “He doesn’t control the life support systems, not directly, and he certainly couldn’t override them in order to cause human beings harm. The machines have failsafe systems built in. It’s just the way things are.”

  “Fine,” said Elemak. “We’ll just put to sleep all the people I don’t want up. I might even let Nafai go to sleep for the rest of the voyage—though I think he might stay tied up like that during his nap.”

  “And come out crippled worse than me at the end?” asked Issib.

  “That’s a thought,” said Elemak, clearly approving of the idea. “I never had any trouble with you.”

  “Doesn’t matter what you plan,” said Issib. “The Oversoul can stop you from starting up any of the suspended animation chambers. All it has to do is keep sending a danger signal to the computers that control them. You can’t override that.”

  Elemak contemplated the idea for a while.

  “Fine,” he said. “I can wait.”

  “You think you can outwait the Oversoul?”

  “I think the Oversoul doesn’t want this voyage to fail,” said Elemak. “I think he’ll eventually realize that I’m going to lead the colony, and he’ll make his accommodation.”

 

  “Not a chance,” Chveya echoed.

  “Oh, really,” said Elemak, turning to her. “Is the Oversoul talking to you now?”

  Chveya said nothing.

 

  “The Oversoul can accomplish her main purpose even if everybody on the ship is dead,” Chveya said.

  “Or so it tells the people it deceives,” said Elemak. “I guess we’ll have an interesting few days, as we find out just how sincere the Oversoul is.”

  “The babies will die first,” said Issib. “And the old people.”

  “If one of my babies dies from this,” said Elemak, “then as far as I’m concerned everybody can die, myself included. Death would be better than another day being ruled over by that lying, sneaky, smart-mouthed, traitorous bastard that Father foisted on me as a brother.” Elemak turned to Chveya and smiled. “Not to say anything bad about your father in front of you, little girl. But then, since you take after him so thoroughly, it probably sounded to you like praise.”

  Chveya’s loathing overcame her fear of his anger. “I would be ashamed of him,” said Chveya, “if a man like you didn’t hate him.”

  Did Obring chuckle softly behind Elemak? Elemak whirled to see, but Obring was all innocence.

  You’ve already lost, thought Chveya. The Oversoul was right. We’ve already beaten you. Now let’s just hope that nobody dies before you finally realize it.

  Eight

  Unbound

  Luet was angry, but not with Elemak. To her, Elemak had become almost a force of nature. Of course he hated Nafai. Of course he would seize on any excuse to hurt him. There was too much history between them now, too much old resentment, too much guilt at Elemak’s earlier attempts to kill his brother. You didn’t manage the situation by trying to change Elemak. You managed it by finding ways to avoid provoking him.

  You did this,
Luet said to the Oversoul. It was your idea. You pushed it. You maneuvered Nafai and me and the parents of the other children to play these little games with time.

 

  You just didn’t count on them waking up, is that it?

 

  My babies are having trouble breathing. They can hardly eat because swallowing takes so long they’re gasping for another breath by the time it’s done. We’re dying, and you tell me everything will work out?

 

  Well, that makes me feel so much better.

 

  You set it up. You put us in the situation.

 

  Oh, no, we won’t be on our own on Earth. We’ll have the Keeper of Earth to look out for us. And if she has half the love and care for us that you have, we’ll all be dead within a year.

 

  That’s nice to hear.

 

  No, we mustn’t have clouded judgment, as we pant to get enough oxygen, as we watch our children getting sluggish and torpid, as we think of our husband twisted and bent, his hands and wrists garotted with cords….

  So went Luet’s conversations with the Oversoul, hour after hour. She knew that when her rage was spent she would fall silent, would reconcile herself to the situation, would even, in the end, probably agree that things had worked out for the best. But they hadn’t worked out yet. And if this was the best, it was hard to imagine what the worst—or even the next best—might have been. That’s the one thing that could never be known: what would have happened. People spoke as if it could be known. “If only that alarm hadn’t gone off.” “If only Nafai had not had such a smart mouth as a boy”—that was Nafai’s own favorite, Luet well knew, as he took the blame for everything on himself. But nothing is ever caused by just one thing, Luet knew, and removing or changing one cause does not always make the effect go away, or even make things better.

  I will someday stop feeling this deep, unreasonable rage at the Oversoul, but not now, not with the sight of Nafai in such cruel bonds so fresh in my mind, so alive in my nightmares. Not with my children gasping after each swallow. Not with bloody-hearted Elemak in control of the people on this ship.

  If only we had all withstood the Oversoul and not held school during the voyage.

  In her heart she raged; ranted at the Oversoul; invented long, viciously cutting speeches that she knew she could never deliver to Elemak, to Mebbekew, to all who supported them. But to the others she showed a calm, impassive face. Confident, unafraid, not even annoyed, as far as she would let anyone else see. She knew that this more than anything else would unsettle Elemak and his followers. To see that she did not seem much worried would worry them; it was the most she could do, little as it was.

  They. We. In her own mind, she had taken to thinking of Elemak’s followers and their families as “the Elemaki”—the people of Elemak—and of those who had taken part in the voyage school as “the Nafari.” Normally such endings were used to refer to nations or tribes. But are we not tribes, here on this ship, however few in numbers we might be?

  Elemak required the Nafari families to take their meals at the same time in the library, and then he or Meb would escort each family back to their cramped quarters and seal the door. While they were gone, Vas and Obring kept watch. Luet studied them, there in the library during meals. They did not seem really comfortable with their office, but whether that was because of shame or because they simply weren’t confident in their ability to prevail in a physical confrontation she had no way of knowing.

  Some of the Elemaki women made feeble attempts at conversation in the library during meals, but Luet did not show by facial expression or gesture, and certainly not by word, that she knew they existed. They went away angry, especially Kokor, Aunt Rasa’s younger daughter, who snippily said, “You brought it all on yourself anyway, putting on airs because they used to call you Waterseer.” Since this had nothing whatever to do with the conflict, it was clear that Kokor was merely revealing her own ancient resentment against Luet. It was hard not to laugh at her.

  Luet’s silence toward the Elemaki women was not motivated by pique. Luet knew perfectly well that they had had nothing to do with the men’s decisions, that Meb’s wife Dol and Elemak’s wife Eiadh were deeply mortified at what their husbands were doing. She also knew, however, that if she ever let them assure her of their sympathy, if she ever let them cross over the invisible boundary between Elemaki and Nafari, it would make them feel much better. In fact, it might make them feel downright comfortable, even noble at having extended friendship to Nafai’s beleaguered wife. Luet did not want them comfortable. She wanted them to be so uncomfortable, in fact, that they began to complain to their husbands, until at last the pressure built up so strongly that the others would begin to fear their wives’ displeasure and contempt almost as much as they feared Elemak’s, and Elemak himself would begin to believe that his actions were costing him more in his family than he was gaining in that twisted part of his psyche that held his hatred for Nafai.

  Of course, there was always the chance that additional pressure from his wife would merely make Elemak more intransigent. But since snubbing the Elemaki women was the only thing Luet could do, she did it.

  The only anomalous thing was the strange way Zdorab and Shedemei were treated. They were definitely being watched, escorted everywhere just like Luet, Hushidh and Issib, and Rasa and Volemak. But in the library, they were not under the same kind of scrutiny. They and their children were encouraged to sit with the Elemaki, and they were allowed to converse freely among themselves.

  It led Luet to the inescapable conclusion that the alarm that opened all the suspended animation chambers had not been an accident, that somehow Zdorab had managed to leave not one but two wake-up calls, and the Oversoul had not found the second one. It was not possible that Shedemei had known about this; it was barely believable that Zdorab had known, for hadn’t he joined with them in teaching the children? Hadn’t he been part of the voyage school? Hadn’t his son and daughter grown up along with the other children? What sort of twisted mind did he have, to allow him to accept freely the friendship of the Nafari, and yet know the whole time that his wake-up call would put Nafai’s life in danger and split the whole community worse than ever? No, it was impossible to imagine. Zdorab couldn’t have done it. No one could be so duplicitous, so….

  And yet there was Zdorab, sitting with his son, Rokya, next to him, and Meb’s wife Dolya right across. Shedemei, on the other hand, sat apart from the others. Her shame was almost palpable. She kept her daughter Dabya with her, and spoke only when spoken to. She did not look at anyone, keeping her eyes to her plate while eating, and then leaving the room as quickly as possible. Luet longed to ask Chveya or Hushidh to assess the relationships, to find out where Zdorab’s loyalty lay. But she was forbidden to talk to Hushidh, and Chveya, too, was kept isolated from everyone else. Oykib was also isolated from the other children; the two of them had certainly attracted special attention from Elemak.

  In the evening of the second day Luet opened the door of her family’s room to find that it was Zdorab knocking. The twins were asleep, breathing rapidly but regularly. The older children—Zhatva, Motiga, and Izuchaya—were not asleep, but they lay on their beds, resting so as to avoid using more oxygen; all of them had been ordered to do this whenever possible, and since they could feel how depleted the oxygen already was, this was one command of Elemak’s that all obeyed readily.

  Luet regarded Zdorab wordlessly, waiting for him to speak.

  “I have t
o talk to you.”

  She debated closing the door in his face. But that would be to judge him without having heard what he had to say. She stepped back and let him inside. Then she leaned out into the corridor and saw that Vas and Obring were both watching. This was not a clandestine visit, then. Unless those two stout hearts actually had the courage to conspire against Elemak’s express orders.

  She closed the door.

  “It was me,” said Zdorab. “I know you know it, but I had to tell you myself. Elemak told me that I should say that I couldn’t have removed my wake-up program even if I wanted to, but I could have. And I did want to. Right at the end, as I was being put to sleep, I tried to shout for Shedya and Nyef to stop, to open my chamber, to….”

  He could see that his words were having no effect on her. He looked away toward the door. “I couldn’t foresee how things would work out. I just—I thought that Elemak would see it was an accomplished fact. That maybe he’d work out a way to have the other children get the last three years of schooling. Something like that. Your children would have had six and a half years, his would have three and a half. I didn’t—the violence, Nafai tied up like that, and now the life support—running out of air—can’t you get the Oversoul to relent and let half of us go back to sleep?”

  So that was what this was about. Elemak and the others were using Zdorab to try to talk her into saving them from the consequences of their own actions.

  “You can tell Elemak that when Nafai is untied and put back in control of the ship, he and his people will be free to go back into their suspended animation chamber at any time. Or should I be saying you and your people?”

  To her surprise, tears almost leapt from Zdorab’s eyes. “I don’t have a people,” he said. “I may not even have a wife. Or a son or a daughter.”