Earthfall Read online

  Potya would be hungry. She had to get back home. It was because Hushidh was nursing a newborn that she was spared most duties involved with preparing for launch. In fact, the schedule for the launch had been set up to accommodate her pregnancy. She and Rasa had been the last to get pregnant before they found out that no one could be pregnant during the voyage. That was because the chemicals and low temperature that would maintain almost all of them in suspended animation during the voyage could do terrible things to an embryo. Rasa's baby, a little girl she gave the too-cute name of Tsennyi, which meant "precious," had been born a month before Hushidh's third son and sixth child. Shyopot, she had named him, "Whisper." Potya as his dearname, his quickname. Coming at the last moment, like a breath of a word from the Oversoul. The last whisper in her heart before she left this world forever. Issib had thought the name was odd, but it was better then "precious," which they both thought was proof that Rasa had lost all sense of judgment and proportion. Potya was waiting, Potya would be hungry, Hushidh's breasts were telling her so with some urgency.

  On the way out of the ship, however, she passed Luet, who greeted her cheerfully, sounding like she always did, as loving and sweet as ever. Hushidh wanted to slap her. Don't lie to me! Don't seem so normal when I know that you have cut yourself off from me in hour heart! If you can put on our affectionate closeness like a mask, then I'll never be able to take joy in it again.

  "What's wrong?" asked Luet.

  "What could be wrong?" asked Hushidh.

  "You wear your heart on your face," said Luet, "at least to me. You're angry at me and I don't know why."

  "Let's not have this conversation now," said Hushidh.

  "When, then? What have I done?"

  "That's exactly the question I'd like to know. What have you done? Or what are you planning to do?"

  That was it. The slight flaring of Luet's eyelids, her hesitation before showing a reaction, as if she were deciding what reaction she ought to show-Hushidh knew that it was something Luet was planning to do. She was plotting something, and whatever it was, it required her to become emotionally distant from everyone else in the community.

  "Nothing," said Luet, "I'm no different from anyone else these days, Hushidh. I'm raising my children and doing my work to prepare for the voyage."

  "Whatever it is you're plotting, Lutya," said Hushidh, "don't do it. It isn't worth it."

  "You don't even know what you're talking about."

  "True, but you know. And I'm telling you, it isn't worth cutting yourself off from the rest of us. It isn't worth cutting yourself off from me"

  Luet looked stricken, and this, at least, was no sham. Unless everything was a sham and always had been. Hushidh couldn't bear to believe that.

  "Shuya," said Luet, "have you seen that? Is it true? I didn't know, but maybe it's true, maybe I've already cut myself off from-oh, Shuya." Luet flung her arms around Hushidh.

  Reluctantly-but why am I reluctant, she wondered-Hushidh returned the embrace.

  "I won't," said Luet. "I won't do anything that would cut me off from you. I can't believe that I-can't you do something about it?"

  "Do something?" asked Hushidh.

  "You know, the way you did to Rashgallivak's men when he came to Aunt Rasa's door that time, meaning to carry her daughters away. You tore his men's loyalty from him and brought him down, just like that. Don't you remember?"

  Hushidh remembered, all right. But that had been easy, for she could see that the ties between Rash and his men were very weak, and it took only a few well-placed words and a bit of attitude to fill them with contempt for him and cause them to abandon him on the spot. "It's not the same," said Hushidh. "I can't make people do things. I could strip Rash's men of their loyalty because they didn't really want to follow him anyway. I can't rebuild your ties to the rest of us. That's something you have to do yourself."

  "But I want to," said Luet.

  "What's going on?" asked Hushidh. "Just explain it to me."

  "I can't," said Luet.

  "Why not?"

  "Because nothing is going on."

  "But something's going to go on, is that it?"

  "No!" said Luet, and now she sounded angry, adamant. "It will not happen. And therefore there's nothing to discuss." With that, Luet fled up the ladderway leading to the center of the ship, where the meal was waiting, where the others were gathering.

  It's the Oversoul, Hushidh knew then. The Oversoul has told Luet to do something that she doesn't want to do. And if she does it, it will cut her off from all the rest of us. From everybody except her husband and children. What is it? What is the Oversoul up to?

  And whatever it was, why hadn't the Oversoul included Hushidh in it?

  For the first time, Hushidh found herself thinking of the Oversoul as an enemy. For the first time, Hushidh discovered that she herself did not have any strong ties of loyalty to the Oversoul. Just like that, mere suspicion had dissolved them. What are you doing to me and my sister, Holy One? Whatever it is, cut it out.

  But no answer came to her. Just silence.

  The Oversoul has chosen Luet to do something, and she has not chosen me. What is it? I have to know. Because if it's something terrible, I'm going to put a stop to it.

  Luet did not like the building they lived in these days. Hard surfaces everywhere, smooth and unalive. She missed the wooden house they had lived in for eight years in their little village of Dostatok, before her husband found and opened the ancient starport of Vusadka. And before that, all her memories were of living in Rasa's house in Basilica. City of women, city of grace; she yearned sometimes for the mists of the hidden and holy lake, for the noise of the crowded markets, for the endless rows of buildings elbowing their way out over the street. But this place-had the builders ever thought of it as beautiful? Had they liked to live in such dead places?

  Yet it was home, all the same, because here was where her children gathered to sleep, to eat; where Nafai finally came home so late at night, to curl up wearily beside her on their bed. And when the time came to enter the starship they had named Basilica, she would no doubt miss this place also, the memories of frenzied work and excited children and groundless fears. If the fears turned out to be groundless.

  Returning to Earth-what did that mean, when no human had been there for millions of years? And those dreams that kept coming into their minds, dreams of giant rats that seemed to be filled with a malevolent intelligence, dreams of batlike creatures who seemed to be allies but were still ugly beyond belief. Even the Over-soul did not know what those dreams meant, or why the Keeper of Earth might have sent them. Still, the overall impression Luet got from everyone's dreams of Earth was that it was not going to be a paradise when they got there.

  What really frightened her, though-and, she suspected, frightened everyone else, too-was the voyage itself. A hundred years asleep? And supposedly they would emerge without having aged a day? It seemed like something out of a myth, like the poor girl who pricked her finger on a mouse's tooth and fell asleep, only to find that when she woke up, all the rich and beautiful girls were fat old ladies, while she remained the most youthful and beautiful of all. But still poor. That was an odd ending to that story, Luet always thought, that she was still poor. Surely there ought to be some version of it in which the king chose her be- . cause of her beauty instead of marrying the richest woman to get his hands on her estate. But that had nothing to do with what she was worrying about right now. Why had her mind wandered so far afield? Oh, yes. Because she was thinking about the voyage. About lying down on the ship and letting the life support system poke needles into her and freeze her for the voyage. How did they know that they wouldn't simply die?

  Well, they could have died a thousand times since things first started falling apart in Basilica. Instead they had lived this long, and the Oversoul had led them to this place, and so far things were working out reasonably well. They had their children. They had prospered. No one had died or even been seriously injured.
Ever since Nafai had got the starmaster's cloak from the Oversoul, even Elemak and Mebbekew, his hate-filled older brothers, had been relatively cooperative-and it was well-known that they hated the idea of voyaging back to Earth.

  So why was the Oversoul so grimly determined to ruin everything?

  Here in this place where the Oversoul actually lived, Luet heard the voice of the Oversoul far more easily than she ever had back in Basilica.

  "The starmaster's cloak will protect Nafai," Luet murmured. "And he will protect us."

 
  Your husband, of course. But who are his allies? His father, Volemak?>

  "Old," murmured Luet.

 

  "Even if he stood with Nafai, he isn't much."

 

  "Only if Nafai fails to hold everyone together."

 

  "You persuade him."

 

  "That's because he knows that your plan would be a disaster. It would cause the very thing that you claim to be trying to prevent."

 

  "Resentment! Oh, just a little, We reach Earth and all the adults are wakened from suspended animation, only to discover-oops!-Nafai and Luet somehow neglected to go into suspended animation themselves, and-oops again!-they somehow got a dozen of the older children to stay awake with them for the whole ten years of the voyage! So you see, my dear sister Shuya, when you went to bed your daughter Dza was only eight years old, but now she's eighteen, and married to Padarok, who, by the way, is seventeen now- sorry about that, Shedemei and Zdorab, we knew you wouldn't mind if we raised your only son for you. And while we had these children up, we happened to spend the whole time teaching them, so that now they are experts on everything they'll need to know to build our colony. They're also large and strong enough to do adult work. But-oops again!-none of your children, Eiadh and Kokor and Sevet and Dol, none of yours has had any of this training. Yours are still little children who won't be much help at all."

 

  "They'll be furious," said Luet. "They'll all hate us- Volemak and Rasa and Issib and Shuya and Shedemei and Zdorab because we stole their oldest children from them, and all the others because we didn't give the same advantage to their children."

 

  "They'll always be sure that the only reason the community broke apart was because Nafai and I did such a terrible thing. They'll hate us and blame us and they will certainly never trust us again."

 

  "And they'll say that you're just a computer and of course you didn't understand how humans would feel, but we understood, and we should have refused to do it."

 
  "I already refused. I refuse again now."

 

  "No!" cried Luet.

  "Mother?" It was Chveya's voice, through the door of Luet's room.

  "What is it, Veya?"

  "Who are you talking to?"

  "Myself, in a dream. All foolishness. Go back to sleep."

  "Is Father home yet?"

  "Still in the ship with Issib."

  "Mother?"

  "Go to sleep now, Chveya. I mean it,"

  She heard the scuffing sound of Chveya's sandals on the floor. What had Chveya heard? How long had she been listening at the door?

 

  Why didn't you warn me?

 

  Because when I speak out loud my thoughts are clearer, that's why. What's your plan, to get Chveya to carry out your plot?

 

  Why couldn't you just talk to him yourself?

 

  That's because he's a very wise man. That's why I love him.

 

  You leave my children alone.

 

  "And to think I once thought of you as ... as a god."

 

  "If I didn't know you were a computer program, I'd say you were a meddlesome, loathsome old bitch."

 

  "Yes, your view is so long that you hardly notice how you ruin the lives of little mayflies like us."

 

  "Let's just say that it hasn't gone as expected."

 

  "Shut up and leave me alone."

  Luet threw herself back down on the bed and tried to sleep. But she kept remembering: Hushidh saw that I am no longer connected to the others in the community. That means that somewhere in my heart I already have the unconscious intention of doing what the Over-soul has planned. So I might as well give up and do it consciously.

  Do it and then spend the rest of my life knowing that my sister and Aunt Rasa and dear Shedemei all hate me and that I absolutely, completely deserve their hatred.

  TWO - THE FACE OF THE OLD ONE

  Everyone expected that Kiti's sculpture this year would be a portrait of his otherself, kTi. That was Kiti's intention, too, right up to the moment when he found his day by the riverbank and set to work, prying and loosening it with his spear. There had been no more beloved young man in the village than kTi, none more hoped-for; there was talk that one of the great ladies would choose him for her husband, an offer of life-marriage, extraordinary for one so young. If that had happened, then Kiti, as kTFs otherself, would have been taken into the marriage as well. After all, since he and kTi were identical, it made no difference which of them might be the sire of a particular child.

  But he and kTi were not identical, Kiti knew. Oh, their bodies were the same, as with every other birthpair. Since about a quarter of all birthpairs both lived to maturity, it wasn't all that rare to have two identical young men preparing to offer themselves to the ladies of the village, to be taken or rejected as a pair.

  So by custom and courtesy, everyone showed Kiti the same respect they showed his otherself. But everyone knew that it was kTi, not Kiti who had earned their reputation for cleverness and strength.

  I wasn't entirely right for kTi to get all the credit for cleverness. O
ften when the two of them were flying together, watching over one of the village herds or scouting for devils or chasing crows away from the maizefields, it was Kiti who said, One of the goats is bound to try to go that way, or, That tree is one that's likely for the devils to use. And at the beginning of their most famous exploit, it was Kiti who said, Let me pretend to be injured on that branch, while you wait with your spear on that higher perch. But when the story was told, it always seemed to be kTi who thought of everything. Why should people assume otherwise? It was always kTi who acted, it was always kTi whose boldness carried the day, while Kiti followed behind, helping, sometimes saving, but never leading.

  Of course he could never explain this to anyone. It would be deeply shameful for one of a birthpair to try to take glory away from his otherself. And besides, as far as Kiti was concerned it was perfectly fair. For no matter how good an idea of Kiti's might have been, it was always kTi's boldness that brought it off.

  Why did it turn out that way? Kiti wasn't lacking in courage, was he? Didn't he always fly right with kTi on his most daring adventures? Wasn't it Kiti who had to sit trembling on a branch, pretending to be injured and terrified, as he heard the faint sounds of a devildoor opening in the tree trunk and the tiny noises of the devil's hands and feet inching their way along the branch behind him? Why was it that no one realized that the greatest courage was the courage to sit still, waiting, trusting that kTi would come with his spear in time? No, the story that was told in the village was all about kTi's daring plan, kTi's triumph over the devil.

  It was evil of me to be so angry, thought Kiti. That's why my otherself was taken from me. That's why when the storm caught us out in the open, kTi was the one whose feet and fingers Wind pried away from the branch, kTi was who was taken up into heaven to fly with the gods. Kiti was not worthy, and so his grip on the branch help until Wind went away. It was as if Wind were saying to him, You envied your otherself, so I have torn you apart to show you how worthless you are without him.

  This was why Kiti meant to sculpt the face of his otherself. And this was why, in the end, he could not. For to sculpt the face of kTi was also to sculpt his own face, and he could not, in his deep unworthiness, bear to do that.