THE SHIPS OF EARTH Read online

  "I mean, I know you were wrong because I know what we are. In the ancient science, the Earth science that I've been exploring through the Index: it's not some internal mechanism of the human body. It's not genetic. It's just the level of male hormones in the mother's bloodstream at the time the hypothalamus goes through its active differentiation and growth."

  "But that's almost random," said Shedemei. "It wouldn't mean anything, it would just be an accident if the level happened to be low for those couple of days."

  "Not really random," said Zdorab. "But an accident all the same. It means nothing, except that we're born crippled."

  "Like Issib."

  "I think when Issib sees me walking, sees what I can do with my hands, that he would gladly trade places with me," said Zdorab. "But when I see him with Hushidh, and see her pregnant as she is, and see how the others have given him real respect because of that, how they recognize him as being one of them, then there are moments—only moments, mind you—when I would gladly trade places with him."

  Shedemei impulsively squeezed his hand, though she was not one who was apt to make such affectionate gestures. It seemed appropriate, though. A friendly thing to do, and so she did it, and he squeezed back, so it was all right. Then she walked briskly away, looking for Lady Rasa.

  And as she went, she thought: Who would have believed that finding out my husband-to-be is a zhop would come as such wonderful news, and that it would make me like him more. The world is truly standing on its head these days.

  Alone in the Index tent after Shedemei and Zdorab left, Nafai did not hesitate. He took the Index—still warm from their hands—and held it close to him and spoke almost fiercely to the Oversoul. "All this time you've been telling me that Father's dream of the tree didn't come from you, but you never mentioned that you have his whole experience in your memory."

  "Of course I do," said the Index. "It would be remiss of me not to record something as important as that."

  "And you knew how much I wanted a dream from the Keeper of Earth. You knew that!"

  "Yes," said the Index.

  "Then why didn't you give me my father's dream!"

  "Because it was your father's dream," said the Index.

  "He told it—it isn't secret anymore! I want to see what he saw!

  "That's not a good idea."

  "I'm tired of your deciding all the time what's a good idea and what isn't. You thought that killing Gaballufix was a fine idea."

  "And it was."

  "For you. You've got no blood on your hands."

  "I have your memory of it. And I didn't do too badly by you out in the desert, when Elemak was plotting to kill you."

  "So… you saved my life because you wanted my genes in our little gene pool."

  "I'm a computer, Nafai. Do you expect me to save your life because I like you? My motives are a great deal more dependable than human emotions."

  "I don't want any of that from you! I want a dream from the Keeper."

  "Exactly. And having me put your father's dream into your mind is not the same thing as having a dream from the Keeper. It's merely having a memory report from me."

  "I want to see those Earth creatures that the others have seen. The bats and angels."

  "Which they think are Earth creatures."

  "I want to have the taste of the fruit of the tree in my mouth!"

  Even as he said it—as his lips silently formed the words, as the cry of anguish formed in his mind -Nafai knew that he was being childish. But he wanted it, wanted so badly to know what his father knew, to have seen what Luet saw, what Hushidh saw, what even General Moozh and Luet's strange mother, Thirsty, saw. He wanted to know, not what they told about it, but what it looked like, felt like, sounded like, smelled like, tasted like. And he wanted it enough that even if he was being childish, he had to have it, he demanded it.

  And so the Oversoul, regarding it as undesirable to have the male it had earmarked as the eventual leader of the party be in such an anguished and therefore unpredictable state, gave him what he asked for.

  It came on him all at once, as he held the Index. The darkness that Father had described, the man who invited him to follow, the endless walking. Only there was something more, something Father hadn't mentioned—a terrible disturbing feeling of wrongness, of unwanted, unthinkable thoughts going on in a powerful undercurrent. This wasn't just a wilderness, it was a mental hell, and he couldn't bear to stay in it.

  "Skip past this part," he said to the Index. "Take me past here, get me out of here."

  All at once the dream stopped.

  "Not out of the dream, "said Nafai impatiently. "Just skip the dull part."

  "The Keeper sent the dull part as much as it sent anything else," said the Index.

  "Skip to the end of it where things start happening."

  "That's cheating, but I'll do it." Nafai hated it when the Index talked like that. It had learned that humans interpreted resistance followed by compliance as teasing, and therefore it now teased them as a way of simulating natural behavior. Only because Nafai knew that it was only a computer doing the teasing, and not a person, it was merely tedious, not fun. Yet when he complained about it, the Index merely replied that everybody else liked it and Nafai shouldn't be such a killjoy.

  The dream came back again, and immediately he was plunged into the darkness, the walking, the back of the man leading him, and that awful mental undercurrent that was so painful and distracting. But then he could hear his Father's voice pleading with the man to tell him something, to lead him out of the place. Only it was not his Father's voice. It was a strange voice that Nafai had never heard before, except that in his mind he kept perceiving it as his own voice, only it was Father's thought that this voice was his own, not Nafai's, because his own voice sounded nothing like this and neither did Father's. Until finally Nafai realized that this was how his Father's voice sounded to his father. In a dream, of course, Father wouldn't hear the voice everyone else hears. He'd hear the voice he thinks he hears when he's speaking. Only it's not even that voice, it's much younger, it's the voice he learned to think of as his own when he formed his identity as a man. Deeper than his real voice, more manly, and younger.

  Except Nafai couldn't shake the powerful conviction that, no matter how he analyzed it, this was his own voice, not Father's at all, though it was also completely wrong for his voice. And then Nafai realized that of course, if the Index was playing back for him his memory of Volemak's experience of the dream, it would be filtered through Volemak's consciousness, and therefore would have all of Volemak's attitudes inextricably tied to it.

  That's what that undercurrent was of distracting, meaningless, confusing, frightening thoughts. It was Father's stream of consciousness, constantly evaluating and understanding and interpreting and responding to the dream. Thoughts that Father wouldn't even have been particularly conscious of himself, because they hadn't surfaced yet—including scraps of ideas like This is a dream, and This is from the Oversoul, and I'm really dead, and This is not a dream, and all kinds of contradictory thoughts jumbled up and piled on top of each other. When Father was having these thoughts they arose out of his own unconscious mind and his own will sorted them out, and the thoughts responded to his will, terminated a thought as soon as he wanted to move on to another. But in Nafai's mind, with all of this replayed, the thoughts did not respond to his own will, and in fact were superimposed on his own stream of consciousness. Therefore he was having twice as many under-the-breath thoughts as he usually had, and half of them did not respond to his will in any way, so it was at once confusing and terrifying, for his mind was out of control.

  Father had given up talking to the man and now was crying out to the Oversoul, pleading with him. It was humiliating to hear the fear, the anxiety, the whining in Father's voice. He had said that he was pleading, but Nafai had never actually heard his father take this self-abasing tone with anyone, and it was like seeing his father going to the toilet or something disgusting l
ike that, he hated seeing his father this way. I'm spying on him. I'm seeing him as he sees himself at his worst moments, instead of seeing the man he presents to the world, to his sons. I'm stealing his self from him, and it's wrong, it's a terrible thing for me to do. But then maybe I should know this about my father, how weak he is. I can't rely on him, a man who whimpers like this to the Oversoul, begging for help like a baby…

  And then he thought of how he himself had pleaded with the Index to show him Father's dream and realized that, in their own minds, even the bravest and strongest of men must have moments like these, only no one ever saw them because they never acted on them outside their dreams and nightmares. I only know this about Father because I'm spying on him.

  At that moment, just as he was about to ask the Index to stop the dream, it changed, and suddenly he was in the field that Father had described. At once Nafai wanted to find the tree, but of course he could only look where Father looked in the dream, and could only see it when Father saw it.

  Father saw now, and it was beautiful, and a great relief after all the darkness and bleakness. Only Nafai not only felt his own relief, but also had Father's relief superimposed on his, and therefore it wasn't relief at all, but more tension, and more distraction and disorientation and it didn't help that, instead of walking to the tree in an orderly way, Father sort of just went to it. He thought of it as walking but he really just got closer suddenly and there he was at the tree.

  Nafai felt Father's desire for the fruit, his delight at the smell of it, but because he was faintly nauseated by the movement toward the tree and faintly headachy because of the constant undercurrent of Father's thoughts, the smell did not arouse any desire in Nafai. Rather it made him sick. Father reached up and picked a fruit and tasted it. Nafai could feel that Father found it delicious, and for a moment, as the taste came into Nafai's mind, it was delicious, powerfully, exquisitely delicious in a way Nafai could hardly have imagined. But almost immediately the experience was subverted by Father's own reaction to it, his own associations with the taste and the smell of it; his reactions were so powerful, Father had been so overwhelmed by the taste that his feelings were out of control, and Nafai could not contain them. It was physically painful. He was terrified. He screamed to the Index to stop the dream.

  It stopped, and Nafai let himself fall sideways onto the carpet, gasping and sobbing, trying to get the madness out of his mind.

  And in a little while he was all right again, because the madness was gone.

  "You see the problem I have communicating clearly with humans?" said the voice inside his head. "I have to frame my ideas so clearly and loudly, and even then most of them think that they're hearing nothing but their own thoughts. Only the Index makes it possible for real clarity of communication with most people. Except you and Luet—I can talk to the two of you better than anybody." The voice of the Index was silent for a moment. "I thought you were going to go insane there for a while. It wasn't pretty, what was happening inside your head."

  "You warned me."

  "Well, I didn't warn you of all that because I didn't know it would happen. I've never put one person's dream inside somebody else's head before. I don't think I'll do it again, either, even if somebody gets very upset because I said no."

  "I agree with your decision," said Nafai.

  "And you were very unkind to judge your father that way. He's a very strong and courageous man."

  "I know. If you were listening in, you know that I figured that all out."

  "I wasn't sure if you'd remember that. Human memory is very unreliable."

  "Leave me alone," said Nafai. "I don't want to talk to you or anybody right now."

  "Then let go of the Index. You can always walk away."

  Nafai removed his hand from the Index, then rolled over, got to his knees, to his feet. His head reeled. He was dizzy and felt sick.

  He staggered outside the tent. Issib and Mebbekew were there. "We're on our way to dinner," said Issib. "Did you have a good session with the Index?"

  "I'm not hungry," said Nafai. "I don't feel well."

  Mebbekew hooted. It sounded to Nafai very much like the pant-hoots of the baboons. "Don't tell me Nafai's going to try to get out of work by claiming to be sick all the time. But I guess it's worked so well for Luet that he figures it's worth a try, right?"

  Nafai didn't even bother to answer Meb. He just staggered away, looking for his tent. I've got to sleep, he thought. That's what I need, to sleep.

  Only when he got there and lay down on the bed, he realized he couldn't possibly sleep. He was too agitated, too nauseated, his head was swimming and he couldn't think but he also couldn't stop thinking.

  So I'll go hunting, thought Nafai. I'll go out and find some small helpless animal and I'll kill it and tear its skin off and rip its guts out and I'm sure I'll feel better because that's the kind of man I am. Or maybe when the smell of the guts hits me I'll throw up and then I'll feel better.

  No one saw him on the way out of camp—if they had seen him, walking so unsteadily and carrying a pulse, they probably would have stopped him. He crossed the stream and went up the hills on the other side. They never hunted in that direction because that was the side where the baboons slept in the cliffs and because if you went too far in that direction you'd get close enough to the villages in the valley called Luzha that you might run into somebody. But Nafai wasn't thinking clearly. He only remembered that once before he had been on the other side of the stream and something wonderful had happened, and right now he very much wanted for something wonderful to happen. Or to die. Whatever.

  I should have waited, he said to himself over and over again, when he could think well enough to know what he was thinking. If the Keeper of Earth wanted to send me a dream, it would have sent me a dream. And if it didn't, I should have waited. I'm sorry. I just wanted to know for myself, but I should have waited. I can stand the waiting now, only now you'll never send me a dream, will you, because I cheated, just as the Index said, I cheated, and so I'm not entitled… in fact I'm worthless now, I've ruined my own brain by what I insisted the Oversoul do for me, and now I'm going to be sick in the head forever and neither you nor the Oversoul nor Luet nor anybody else will have any use for me and I might as well drop off the edge of a cliff somewhere and die.

  It was sundown when he realized that he had no idea of where he was, or how far he had wandered. He only knew that he was sitting on a rock on the crest of a hill—in plain sight, if there were some bandit looking for someone to rob, or a hunter looking for prey. And even though he had his head in his hands and was looking at the ground, he was aware that someone was sitting across from him. Someone who had not yet said anything, but who was watching him intently.

  Say something, said Nafai silently. Or kill me and get it over with,

  "Oo. Oo-oo," said the stranger.

  Nafai looked up then, for he knew the voice. "Yobar," he said.

  Yobar wiggled a little and hooted a few more times, in delight, apparently, at having been recognized.

  "I don't have anything for you to eat," said Nafai.

  "Oo," said Yobar cheerfully. He was probably just grateful for someone to notice him, since he had been ostracized by the troop.

  Nafai reached out a hand to him, and Yobar strode boldly forward and laid his forehand in Nafai's.

  And in that moment, Yobar was not a baboon at all. Instead, Nafai saw him as a winged animal, with a face at once more fierce and more intelligent than a baboon's. The one wing flexed and stretched, but the other wing did not, for it was the hand that Nafai held in his own. The winged creature who had taken Yobar's place spoke to him, but Nafai couldn't understand his language. The creature—the angel, Nafai knew that's what it was—spoke again, only now Nafai understood, vaguely, that it was warning him of danger.

  "What should I do?" asked Nafai.

  But the angel looked around and became more agitated and then, seeming to be quite frightened, it let go of his hand and leapt
skyward and flew, circling overhead.

  Nafai heard a sound of something hard scraping over rock. He looked back down at the rocks around him and saw what had made the noise. A half dozen of a larger, fiercer creature. The rats from the dreams the others had had. They were heavier and stronger-looking than the baboons had been, and Nafai well knew from the stories of other desert travelers that baboons were far stronger than a full-sized man. The teeth were fierce, but the hands—for they were hands, not claws—looked terrible indeed, especially because many of them held stones and seemed prepared to throw them.

  Nafai thought of his pulse. How many of them can I kill before they hit me with a stone and knock me down? Two of them? Three? Better to die fighting than to let them take me without any cost at all.

  Better? Why would it be better? Bad enough that one should die. What's to be gained by killing more, except that they'd feel more justified in having slain me.

  So he set down his pulse on the ground in front of him, and clasped his hands across his knees, and waited.

  They waited also. Their arms were still poised to throw. The angel still circled overhead, a silent witness except for occasional high-pitched squeals.

  Then, suddenly, Nafai realized he had something in his hand. He opened his hands and saw that he was holding a fruit. He recognized it immediately as one of the fruits of the tree of life.

  He lifted it to his lips and tasted it, and ah! It was as Father had said, as Nafai had tasted for just a moment before, the most exquisite sensation he could imagine feeling. Only this time there was no distraction, no confusion, no disharmony; he was at peace inside himself, and healed.

  Without thinking, he took the fruit from his lips and offered it to the rat directly in front of him.

  The rat looked down at his hand, then up at Nafai's face again, then down at the fruit.

  Nafai thought of laying the fruit down and letting the rat pick it up himself, but then he realized that no, it would be wrong to let the fruit touch the ground, to let it be picked up like a rotting windfall. It should be taken from a hand. This fruit should always be taken from the tree itself, or from someone's hand.