THE SHIPS OF EARTH Read online

  Shedemei did not remind her that only a few days ago they had felt quite unsafe in their beds. Nor did she mention that Rasa had just proved Shedemei's own point—when Rasa thought of home and safety, it was Basilica she had in mind. The ghost of their old life in the city was going to haunt them for a long time to come.

  Now it was Kokor's turn to stop her beast and wait for Rasa to catch up. "You were bad, weren't you, Mama?" she said. "Did nasty old Elemak have to come and tell you off?"

  Shedemei was disgusted at Kokor's little-girl silliness—but then, Kokor usually disgusted her. Her attitude always seemed false and manipulative; to Shedemei the wonder of it was that these pathetically obvious ploys must work on people fairly often, or Kokor would have found new ones.

  Well, whoever Kokor's little-girl act worked on, it wasn't her own mother. Rasa simply fixed Koya with an icy stare and said, "Shedya and I were having a private conversation, my dear. I'm sorry if you misunderstood and thought we had invited you to join us."

  It took just a moment for Kokor to understand; when she did, her face darkened for a moment—with anger? Then she gave a prim little smile to Shedemei and said, "Mother is perpetually disappointed that I didn't turn out like you Shedya. But I'm afraid neither my brain nor my body had enough inner beauty." Then, awkwardly, Kokor got her camel moving faster and soon she was ahead of them again.

  Shedemei knew that Kokor had meant to insult her by reminding her that the only kind of beauty she would ever have was the inner kind. But Shedemei had long since grown out of her adolescent jealousy of pulchritudinous girls.

  Rasa must have been thinking the same thoughts. "Odd, isn't it, that physically plain people are perfectly able to see physical beauty in others, while people who are morally maimed are blind to goodness and decency. They honestly think it doesn't exist."

  "Oh, they know it exists, all right," said Shedemei. "They just never know which people have it. Not that my feelings at this moment would prove me to be a moral beauty."

  "Having thoughts of murder, were you?" said Rasa.

  "Oh, nothing so direct or final," said Shedemei. "I was just wishing for her to develop truly awful saddle sores."

  "And Elemak? Did you wish some uncomfortable curse on him?"

  "Not at all," said Shedemei. "Perhaps, as you say, he didn't need to try to frighten us into obedience. But I think he was right. After all, the Oversoul hasn't had exactly a perfect record in keeping us out of danger. No, I harbor no resentment toward Elya."

  "I wish I were as mature as you, then. I found myself resenting the way he spoke to me. So condescending. I know why, of course—he feels my status in the city is a threat to his authority out here, so he has to put me in my place. But he should realize that I'm wise enough to follow his leadership without his having to humiliate me first."

  "It isn't a question of what you need," said Shedemei. "It never is. It's a question of what he needs. He needs to feel superior to you. For that matter, so do I, you silly old woman."

  For a moment Rasa looked at her in horror. Then, just as Shedemei was about to explain that she was joking—why didn't anybody ever understand her humor—Rasa grinned at her. "I'd rather be a silly old woman than a silly young one," she said. "Silly old women don't make such spectacular mistakes."

  "Oh, I don't know about that," said Shedemei. "Coming on this expedition, for instance …"

  "A mistake?"

  "For me it certainly is. My life is genetics, but the closest I'm going to come to it for the rest of my life is if I manage to reproduce my own genes."

  "You sound so despairing. Having children isn't all that awful. They aren't all Kokor, and even she may grow up to be human someday."

  "Yes, but you loved your husbands," said Shedemei. "Whom will I end up with, Aunt Rasa? Your crippled son? Or Gaballufix's librarian?"

  "I think Hushidh plans to marry Issib," said Rasa. Her voice was cold, but Shedemei didn't care.

  "Oh, I know how you've got us sorted out. But tell me, Aunt Rasa, if Nafai hadn't happened to drag the librarian along with him when he was stealing the Index… would you have arranged to bring me ?"

  Rasa's face was positively stony. She didn't answer for a long time.

  "Come now, Aunt Rasa. I'm not a fool, and I'd rather you not try to fool me."

  "We needed your skills, Shedya. The Oversoul chose you, not me."

  "You're sure it wasn't you, counting up males and females and making sure we came out even?"

  "The Oversoul sent you that dream."

  "The sad thing is," said Shedemei, "that except for you there's not a one of us that's a proven reproducer. For all you know, you've set up one of these men with a sterile wife. Or perhaps you've put one of us women with a sterile husband."

  Rasa's anger was beginning to turn from cold to hot now. "I told you, it wasn't my choice… Luet had a vision, too, and—"

  "Are you going to set the example? Are you going to have more children, Aunt Rasa?"

  Rasa seemed completely nonplussed. "Me? At my age?"

  "You've still got a few good eggs in you. I know you haven't reached menopause, because you're flowing now."

  Rasa looked at her in consternation. "Why don't I just lie down under one of your microscopes?"

  "You'd never fit. I'd have to slice you razor thin."

  "Sometimes I feel as if you already had."

  "Rasa, you make us stop several times a day. I know you have better bladder control than that. We all know you're shedding the tears of the moon."

  Rasa raised her eyebrows briefly, a sort of facial shrug. "More children indeed."

  "I think you must. To set an example for all of us," said Shedemei. "Don't you understand that we're not just taking a trip. We're a colony. The first priority of colonists is reproduction. Anyone who isn't having babies is next to worthless. And no matter how envious Elemak is of your authority, you are the leader of the women here. You must set the pattern for us all. If you are willing to get pregnant during this trip, the others will fall into line, particularly since their husbands will feel the need to demonstrate that they can get a woman just as pregnant as old Wetchik can."

  "He's not Wetchik anymore," said Rasa irrelevantly. "He's Volemak."

  "He can still perform, can't he?"

  "Really, Shedemei, is there anything you won't ask? Would you like us to provide stool samples for you next?"

  "Before this journey is over I imagine I'll be looking at samples of almost everything. I'm the closest thing to a physician we have."

  Rasa suddenly chuckled. "I can just see Elemak bringing you a semen sample."

  Shedemei had to laugh, too, at the very idea of asking him. Such an assault on his dignity as leader of the caravan!

  They rode together in silence for a few minutes. Then Rasa spoke. "Will you do it?" she asked.

  "Do what?"

  "Marry Zdorab?"

  "Who?"

  "The librarian, Zdorab."

  "Marry him," sighed Shedemei. "I never meant to marry anyone."

  "Marry him and have his babies."

  "Oh, I suppose I will," said Shedemei. "But not if we live under baboon law."

  "Baboon law!"

  "Like Basilica—with a competition for new mates every year. I'll take this middle-aged man that I've never seen, I'll let him bed me, I'll bear his children, I'll raise them with him—but not if I have to fight to keep him. Not if I have to watch him court Eiadh or Hushidh or Dolya or—or Kokor— every time our marriage contract is about to expire, and then come crawling back to me and ask me to renew his contract for another year only because none of the truly desirable women would have him."

  Rasa nodded. "I see now what you were trying to say before. It wasn't about Kokor's infidelity, it was about the customs we all grew up with."

  "Exactly," said Shedemei. "We're too small a group to keep the old marriage customs of Basilica."

  "It's really just a matter of scale, isn't it," said Rasa. "In the city when a woman doesn'
t renew a man, or when he doesn't ask, you can avoid each other for a while until the pain wears off. You can find someone else, because there are so many thousands to choose from. But we'll have exactly sixteen people. Eight men, eight women. It would be unbearable."

  "Some would want to kill, the way Kokor tried to do," said Shedemei. "And others would wish to die."

  "You're right, you're right, you're right," murmured Rasa, thinking aloud now, it seemed. "But we can't tell them now. Some of them would turn back—desert or no desert, bandits or no bandits. Lifelong monogamy—why, I doubt that Sevet and Kokor have ever been faithful for a whole week. And Meb hadn't married till now for the good reason that he has no intention of being faithful but lacks my daughters' ability to behave with complete dishonesty. And now we're going to tell them that they must remain faithful. No one-year contracts, no chance to change."

  "They're not going to like it."

  "So we won't tell them until we're at Volemak's camp. When it's far too late for them to turn back."

  Shedemei could hardly believe she had heard Rasa say such a thing. Still, she answered mildly. "Except it occurs to me," she said, "that if they want to turn back, perhaps we should let them. They're free people, aren't they?"

  Rasa turned fiercely to her. "No, they aren't," she said. "They were free until they made the choices that brought them here, but now they're not free because our colony, our journey can't succeed without them."

  "You're so certain you can hold people to their commitments," murmured Shedemei. "No one's ever made them do that before. Can you now?"

  "It's not just for the sake of the expedition," said Rasa. "It's for their own good. The Oversoul has made it clear that Basilica is going to be destroyed—and them with it, if they're still there when the time comes. We're saving their lives. But the ones most likely to turn back are also the ones least likely to believe in the visions the Oversoul has shown us. So to save their lives we must—"

  "Deceive them?"

  "Withhold some explanations until later."

  "Because you know so much better than they do what's good for them?"

  "Yes," said Rasa. "Yes, I do."

  It infuriated Shedemei. All that Rasa had said was true enough, but it didn't change Shedemei's conviction that people had the right to choose even their own destruction, if they wanted. Maybe that was another luxury of living in Basilica, having the right to destroy yourself through your own stupidity or shortsightedness, but if so it was a luxury that Shedemei was not yet ready to give up. It was one thing to tell people that faithful monogamy was one of the conditions of staying with the group. Then they could choose whether to stay and obey or leave and live by another rule. But to lie to them until it was too late to choose … it wasfreedom that was at stake here, and it was freedom that made survival worthwhile. "Aunt Rasa," said Shedemei, "you are not the Oversoul."

  And with that remark, Shedemei urged her camel to move faster, leaving Rasa behind her. Not that Shedemei had anything more she could have said. But she was too angry to stay there; the idea of quarreling with Aunt Rasa was unbearable. Shedemei hated to argue with anyone. It always set her to brooding for days. And she had enough to brood about as it was.

  Zdorab. What kind of man becomes an archivist for a power-hungry killer like Gaballufix? What kind of man lets a boy like Nafai manipulate him into betraying his trust, giving up the precious Index, and then follows the thief right out of the city? What kind of man then lets Nafai wrestle him into submission and extract an oath from him to go out into the desert and never see Basilica again?

  Shedemei knew exactly what kind of man: a tedious stupid weakling. A shy dull-witted coward who will formally ask my permission before each of his studious attempts to impregnate me. A man who will neither take nor give joy in our marriage. A man who will wish he had married any one of the other women here rather than me, but who will stay with me only because he knows that none of them would have him.

  Zdorab, my husband-to-be. I can't wait to meet you.

  The tents went up more smoothly their third night in the desert. Everyone knew well now which jobs they had to do—and which they could avoid. Rasa noticed with contempt that both Meb and Obring managed to spend more than half their time "helping" their wives do jobs that were already childishly easy—they had to be, or neither Dolya nor Kokor would have done them. Not that Dol wasn't willing to work sometimes, but as long as Kokor and Sevet weren't doing much that was worthwhile, she would not put herself beneath them. After all, Dol had been a starring actress when Kokor and Sevet were still chirping out their little children's songs. Rasa knew how Dol's mind worked. Status first, then human decency.

  But at least decency was on her list! Who are these people I have raised and taught? The ones who are too selfish to endure threaten our peace, and yet some of the others are so compliant with the Oversoul that I fear even more for them.

  I am not in charge of their lives now, Rasa reminded herself. I am in charge of getting the tent lines taut enough that it won't collapse in the first wind.

  "It will collapse in a bad wind, no matter what you do," said Elemak. "So you don't have to make it strong enough to withstand a hurricane."

  "Just a sandstorm?" Rasa felt a drop of sweat slip into her eye and sting, just as he spoke. She tried to wipe it away with her sleeve, but her arm was sweatier than her face, even under the light muslin.

  "It's sweaty close work, no matter what the weather outside," said Elemak. "Let me."

  He held the guyline tight while she cinched the knot into place. She well knew that he could just as easily have done the knot himself, without help holding the line. She saw at once what he was doing, making sure she learned her job, showing confidence in her, and letting her feel a sense of accomplishment when the tent held up. "You're good at this," she said.

  "There's nothing hard about tying knots, once you learn them."

  She smiled. "Ah, yes, knots. Is that what you're tying together here?"

  He smiled back—and she could see that he did appreciate her praise. "Among other things, Lady Rasa."

  "You are a leader of men," said Rasa. "I say this not as your stepmother, or even as your sister-in-law, but as a woman who has had some occasion of leadership myself. Even the lazy ones are ashamed to be too obvious about it." She did not mention that so far he had only succeeded in centering authority in himself—that no one had internalized anything yet, so that when he wasn't around, nothing happened. Perhaps that was all he had ever needed to learn about leadership during his years leading caravans. But if he meant to rule over this expedition (and Rasa was not such a fool as to think Elemak had any intention of allowing his father to have more than titular authority) he would have to learn how to do much more than make people dependent on him. The essence of leadership, my dear young ruler, is to make people independent and yet persuade them to follow you freely. Then they will obey the principles you've taught them even when your back is turned. But she could not say this to him aloud; he wasn't able yet to hear such counsel. So instead she continued to praise him, hoping to build his confidence until he could hear wise counsel. "And I've heard less argument and complaint from my daughters than I ever heard back when their lives were easy."

  Elemak grimaced. "You know as well as I do that half of them would rather head back to Basilica this moment. I'm not sure that I'm not one of them."

  "But we're not going back," said Rasa.

  "I imagine it would be rather anticlimactic, returning to Moozh's city after he sent us away in such glory."

  "Anticlimactic and dangerous," said Rasa.

  "Well, Nafai has been cleared of the charge of killing my beloved half-brother Gaballufix."

  "He's been cleared of nothing," said Rasa. "Nor, for that matter, have you, son of my husband."

  "Me!" His face became hard and a little flushed. Not good, that he showed his emotion so easily. Not what a leader needed.

  "I just want you to realize that returning to Basilica is
out of the question."

  "Be assured, Lady Rasa, that if I wanted to return to Basilica before seeing my father again, I would do so. And may yet do so after I see him."

  She nodded slightly. "I'm glad that it cools off in the desert at night. So that we can bear the brutal heat of day, knowing the night will be gentle."

  Elemak smiled. "I arranged it just for you, Lady Rasa."

  "Shedemei and I were talking today," said Rasa.

  "I know."

  "About a very serious matter," said Rasa. "Something that could easily tear our colony apart. Sex, of course."

  Elemak was instantly alert. "Yes?" he asked—but his voice was calm.

  "In particular," said Rasa, "the mailer of marriage."

  "Everyone is paired up well enough for now," said Elemak. "None of the men are sleeping unsatisfied, which is better than the way it is with most of my caravans. As for you and Hushidh and Shedemei, you'll soon be with your husbands, or the men who will be their husbands."

  "But for some it is not the coupling itself they desire, but rather the chase."

  "I know," said Elemak. "But the choices are limited."

  "And yet some are still choosing, even though their choice seems to be made."

  She could see how he stiffened his back and his neck, pretending to be calm, refusing to lean toward her and ask her the question in his heart. He worries about Eiadh, his bride, his beloved. She had not realized he was so perceptive about her, that he would already worry.

  "They must be held faithful to their spouses," said Rasa.

  Elemak nodded. "I can't say that I've had the problem—on my caravans, the men are alone until we reach cities, and then it's whores for most of them."

  "And for you?" said Rasa.

  "I'm married now," said Elemak. "To a young wife. A good wife."

  "A good wife for a young man," said Rasa.

  A smile flickered at the corners of his mouth. "No one is young forever," he said.