Earthborn (Homecoming) Read online

  “Don’t swear by the Legless One,” said Aronha sharply.

  “Father says it’s just a dangerous snake and not a real god so why not?” said Edhadeya defiantly.

  “You’re not superstitious now, are you, Aronha?” asked Mon.

  “Father says to have respect for the beliefs of others, and you know half the digger servants still hold the Legless One sacred,” said Aronha.

  “Yes,” said Edhadeya, “and they’re always swearing by him.”

  “They don’t say his name outright,” said Aronha.

  “But Aronha, it’s just a snake.” Edhadeya wagged her head back and forth like a maize tassel. In spite of himself, Aronha laughed. Then his face got serious again, and he looked back at the sixteen soldiers, jogging out among the fields in single file, heading up the river to the southern border.

  “Will they find my dream?” asked Edhadeya.

  “If the Keeper sent you the dream,” said Aronha, “it must mean he wants the Zenifi found.”

  “But that doesn’t mean that anybody in Monush’s party even knows how to hear the Keeper when she speaks,” said Edhadeya.

  Aronha glared but didn’t look at her. “He decides whom he’s going to speak to. It’s not a matter of knowing how.”

  “ She can only speak to people who know how to listen, which is why our ancestor Luet was so famous as the waterseer, and her sister Hushidh and her niece Chveya as ravelers. They had great power in them, and—”

  “The power wasn’t in them,” said Aronha. “It was in the Keeper. He chose them, his favorites—and I might point out that none of them was greater than Nafai himself, who had the cloak of the starmaster and commanded the heavens with his—”

  “Bego says it’s all silliness,” said Mon.

  The others fell silent.

  “He does?” said Aronha, after a while.

  “You’ve heard him say so, haven’t you?” asked Mon.

  “Never to me,” said Aronha. “What does he say is silliness? The Keeper?”

  “The idea of our heroic ancestors,” said Mon. “Everybody claims to have heroic ancestors, he says. By the time enough generations have passed, they become gods. He says that’s where gods come from. Gods in human shape, anyway.”

  “How interesting,” said Aronha. “He teaches the king’s son that the king’s ancestors are made up?”

  Only now did Mon realize that he might be causing trouble for his tutor. “No,” he said. “Not in so many words. He just . . . raised the possibility.”

  Aronha nodded. “So you don’t want me to turn him in.”

  “He didn’t say it outright.”

  “Just remember this, Mon,” said Aronha. “Bego might be right, and our stories of great human ancestors with extraordinary powers granted by the Keeper of Earth, those stories might all be exaggerated or even outright fantasies or whatever. But we middle people aren’t the only ones who might want to revise history to fit our present needs. Don’t you think a patriotic sky man might want to cast doubt on the stories of greatness among the ancestors of the middle people? Especially the ancestors of the king?”

  “Bego’s not a liar,” said Mon. “He’s a scholar.”

  “I didn’t say he was lying,” said Aronha. “He says we believe in these tales because it’s so useful and satisfying to us. Maybe he doubts the same tales because the doubt is useful and satisfying to him.”

  Mon frowned. “Then how can we ever know what’s true?”

  “We can’t,” said Aronha. “That’s what I figured out a long time ago.”

  “So you don’t believe in anything?”

  “I believe in everything that seems most true to me right now,” said Aronha. “I just refuse to be surprised when some of those things I believe now turn out to be false later. It helps keep me from being upset.”

  Edhadeya laughed. “And where did you learn that idea?”

  Aronha turned to her, mildly offended. “You don’t think I could think it up myself?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Monush taught me that,” said Aronha. “One day when I asked him if there really was a Keeper of Earth. After all, according to the old stories, there once was a god called the Oversoul, and that turned out to be a machine inside an ancient boat.”

  “An ancient boat that flew through the air,” said Mon. “Bego says that only the sky people fly, and that our ancestors invented that flying boat story because middle people were so jealous of the fact that sky people could fly.”

  “Some sky people can fly,” said Edhadeya. “I’ll bet old Bego is so old and fat and creaky he can’t even get off the ground anymore.”

  “But he could when he was young,” said Mon. “He can remember.”

  “And you can imagine,” said Aronha.

  Mon shook his head. “To remember is real. To imagine is nothing.”

  Edhadeya laughed. “That’s silly, Mon. Most of the things people say they remember they only imagine anyway.”

  “And where did you learn that?” asked Aronha with a smirk.

  Edhadeya rolled her eyes. “From Uss-Uss, and you can laugh if you want, but she’s—”

  “She’s a glorified housemaid!” said Aronha.

  “She’s the only friend I had after Mother died,” said Edhadeya firmly, “and she’s very wise.”

  “She’s a digger,” said Mon softly.

  “But not an Elemaku,” said Edhadeya. “Her family has served the kings of the Nafari for five generations.”

  “As slaves,” said Mon.

  Aronha laughed. “Mon listens to an old angel, Edhadeya to a fat old digger slave woman, and I listen to a soldier who is known for his courage and cleverness in war, and not for his scholarship. We all choose our own teachers, don’t we? I wonder if our choice of teacher shows anything about what our lives will be.”

  They thought about that in silence as they watched the small swarm of spies that marked the location of Monush’s party as they continued their journey far up the valley of the Tsidorek.

  THREE

  RESISTANCE

  “Nafai told me something once,” said Shedemei to the Oversoul.

  The Oversoul, being endlessly patient, waited for her to go on.

  “Back before you . . . chose him.”

  “I remember the time,” said the Oversoul, perhaps not endlessly patient after all.

  “Back when you were still trying to keep him and Issib from discovering too much about you.”

  “It was Issib who was the real problem, you know. He’s the one who thought of opposing me.”

  “Yes, well, but he didn’t succeed until Nafai joined him.”

  “It was a concern for a while.”

  “Yes, I imagine. Both of them, struggling as hard as they could. You had to devote all your resources to dealing with them.”

  “Never all. Never even close to all.”

  “Enough that you finally gave up.”

  “Took them into my confidence.”

  “Stopped struggling against them and enlisted them on your side. You had no choice, right?”

  “I knew all along that they were valuable. I decided at that point that they were the ones I would use to assemble a working starship.”

  “Would you have chosen them if they hadn’t been causing so much trouble for you?”

  “I had already chosen their father to . . . start things moving.”

  “But it was Luet you wanted, wasn’t it.”

  “Nafai was very insistent. Very ambitious. He couldn’t stand not to be in the midst of whatever was going on. I decided that was useful. And I never had to choose between him and Luet, because they ended up together.”

  “Yes, yes, I’m sure everything worked out exactly according to plan.”

  “I was programmed to be infinitely adaptable, as long as I continue working toward the highest priorities. My plan changed, but its goal never did.”

  “All right then, that’s the entire point I was trying to make.” Shedem
ei laughed. “If I didn’t know better, Lady Oversoul, I would suppose you were protecting your pride.”

  “I have no pride.”

  “I’m relieved to hear it,” said Shedemei. “I discarded my own long ago.”

  “What was the point you were trying to make?”

  “Nafai forced you to listen to him, to notice him, to take him into account.”

  “Nafai and Issib.”

  “They did it by resisting you, and doing it in such a way that you had to adapt your plans to fit their . . . what did you say? Their ambition.”

  “Issib was stubborn. Nafai was ambitious.”

  “I’m sure you have lists of adjectives appended to all our names in your files.”

  “Don’t be snippy, Shedemei. It isn’t becoming to a woman who has abandoned her pride.”

  “Will you listen to my plan?”

  “Oh, not a point then, a plan.”

  “You still have the power to influence human beings.”

  “In a small area of the world, yes.”

  “It doesn’t have to be on the other side of the planet, you know. Just there in the gornaya.”

  “Anywhere in the gornaya, yes, I can have some influence.”

  “And that technique you used back on Harmony, to keep us from developing dangerous technologies—”

  “Making people temporarily stupid.”

  “And you can still send dreams.”

  “Not the powerful dreams the Keeper sends.”

  “Dreams, though. Clear ones.”

  “Much clearer than the Keeper’s dreams,” said the Oversoul.

  “Well then. We have a party of Nafari soldiers headed up the valley of the Tsidorek. When they come near Lake Sidonod, the area is so thickly settled with Elemaki that they’ll have to take a dangerous route high up on the mountainside. But the mountain range is ragged there. At some points the crest is very low, so the valleys connect through a narrow pass. If they can sneak through that pass, they’ll come down a canyon that will lead them straight to Chelem, where Akmaro’s people are held as slaves to the Elemaki.”

  “Slaves to Pabulog and his sons, you mean.”

  “So when they near that pass, the Keeper will naturally try to steer them that way.”

  “One would think,” said the Oversoul.

  “So why not make them very stupid until they’ve missed the chance?”

  “The Keeper will just send them back,” said the Oversoul. “And why would I want to keep them from rescuing Akmaro?”

  “The Keeper will try to send them back. But in the meantime, you’ll lead them along the mountainside until they drop down into the canyon where the river Zidomeg forms.”

  “Zinom,” said the Oversoul, understanding now. “Where the main body of the Zenifi are also enslaved, more or less, by the Elemaki.”

  “Exactly,” said Shedemei. “Monush will think he’s fulfilled his mission. He’ll have found a group of Zenifi in bondage to diggers. He’ll figure out a way to bring them to safety. He’ll bring them home.”

  “He can’t take that whole population along the mountainside.”

  “No,” said Shedemei. “You’ll have to send him dreams that will bring him home by going up the valley of the Ureg and then over the pass that leads down to the valley of the Padurek.”

  “That takes them right past Akmaro’s group.”

  “And the Keeper will try to get Monush to find Akmaro’s people again.”

  “And I interfere again,” said the Oversoul. “That’s not what I’m supposed to do, Shedemei. My purpose is not to interfere with the Keeper of Earth.”

  “No, your purpose is to get the Keeper’s help so you can return to Harmony. Well, if you cause her enough trouble, my dear, perhaps she’ll send you back to Harmony in order to stop you from interfering.”

  “I don’t think I can do that.” The Oversoul paused. “My programming may stop me from consciously rebelling against what I think the Keeper wants.”

  “Well, you figure it out,” said Shedemei. “But in the meantime, keep this in mind: As long as the Keeper isn’t telling you anything, how do you know the Keeper doesn’t want you to pull exactly the kind of stunt I’m suggesting? Just to prove your mettle?”

  “Shedemei, you’re romanticizing again,” said the Oversoul. “I’m a machine, not a puppet wishing to be made alive. There are no tests. I do what I’m programmed to do.”

  “Do you?” asked Shedemei. “You’re programmed to take initiative. Here’s a chance. If the Keeper doesn’t like it, all she has to do is tell you to stop. But at least you’ll be talking then.”

  “I’ll think about it,” said the Oversoul.

  “Good,” said Shedemei.

  “All right,” said the Oversoul. “I’ve thought about it. We’ll do it.”

  “That quickly?” Shedemei knew the Oversoul was a computer, but it still surprised her how much the old machine could do in the time it took a human to say a single word.

  “I made a test run and found that nothing in my programming interferes. I can do it. So we’ll give it a try when Monush gets to the right place, and find out how much the Keeper will put up with before deigning to make contact with me.”

  Shedemei laughed. “Why can’t you admit it, you old fake?”

  “Admit what?”

  “You’re really pissed off at the Keeper.”

  “I am not,” said the Oversoul. “I’m worried about what might be happening on Harmony.”

  “Relax,” said Shedemei. “Your otherself is there, as the angels would say.”

  “I’m not an angel,” said the Oversoul.

  “Neither am I, my friend,” said Shedemei.

  “You sound wistful.”

  “I’m a gardener. I miss the feel of earth under my feet.”

  “Time for another trip to the surface?”

  “No,” said Shedemei. “No point in it. Nothing I planted last time will be ready for measurement. It would be a waste and a risk.”

  “You are allowed to have fun,” said the Oversoul. “Even the one who wears the cloak of the starmaster is allowed to do a few things simply because of the joy of doing them.”

  “Yes, and I’ll do it. When the time comes.”

  “You have a will of steel,” said the Oversoul.

  “And a heart of glass,” said Shedemei. “Brittle and cold. I’m going to take a nap. Why don’t you use the time to design a dream?”

  “Don’t you have dreams enough on your own?”

  “Not for me,” said Shedemei. “For Monush.”

  “I was making a joke,” said the Oversoul.

  “Well next time wink at me or something so I know.” Shedemei got up from the terminal and padded off to bed.

  Monush and his men slept yet another night on yet another narrow shelf of rock high above the valley floor. The torches in the digger village far below burned late; Monush’s fifteen companions watched most of them until they guttered and winked out. It was hard to sleep, weary as they were, for if they rolled over in the night they would plunge twenty rods before so much as a knob of stone would break their fall—and, no doubt, the first of many bones. They all pushed sharp stakes into the rock or, if there was no slight crevice to hold them, they piled them so they might feel them if they started to roll toward the edge in their sleep. But all in all, it was a precarious slumber indeed, and there was probably no moment when more than half the men were asleep.

  Despite all this, tonight Monush slept well enough to dream, and when he awoke, he knew the path that he had to take in order to find the Zenifi. This high path would widen and slope downward, but at a certain place, if he should climb, he would come to a pass over these mountains and down into another valley. There he would see a large lake, and by passing down the valley of the river that flowed from it, in due time he would come to the place that Edhadeya had dreamed of.

  He awoke from the dream just as the sky was beginning to lighten overhead. Carefully he pulled out the stakes he ha
d pushed by hand into the stone and put them back into his bag. Then he gnawed on the cold maizecake that would be his only meal of the day, unless they found food somewhere on the journey—unlikely on such steep cliffs, and so high in thin air. This was the region called “Crown of the Gornaya,” the highest region of the great massif of mountain ranges that had long harbored earth people, middle people, and sky people. It was here that the seven lakes had formed, all of them holy, but none holier than Sidonod, the pure source of the Tsidorek, the sacred river that flowed through the heart of Darakemba. Some of the men had hoped to set eyes on Sidonod itself, but now Monush knew that they would not. The pass would come too soon. Within the first hour.

  Wordlessly—for sound carried far in the thin dry mountain air—Monush gave the signal to move. All the men were awake now, and they walked, slowly and stiffly at first, along the narrow shelf of rock. Twice they came to places where the shelf gave out and they had to climb, once up, once down, to another shelf that allowed them to walk on.

  Then they reached a spot where the shelf widened and started to lead downward to an area of easier travel. Monush recognized the place at once, and thought . . .

  Thought what? He couldn’t remember. Something about this spot.

  “What is it?” asked Chem, his second. In a whisper, of course.

  Monush shook his head. It kept coming just to the tip of his tongue, some word, some idea, but he couldn’t remember why. Ah! A dream!

  But the dream had fled. He couldn’t think of what the dream had been or what it meant at all.

  How foolish, thought Monush. Foolish of me, to think my dreams could tell me true things the way Edhadeya’s did.

  He beckoned the men to follow him as he led onward, down the broadening path. Within half an hour they rounded a curve and saw what so many men dreamed of but never dared to hope to see: Holy Sidonod, shining in the first sunlight to crest the mountain.

  Below them, along the shores of the lake, there were villages, each with its cookfires. Of course only the humans would live in the huts and, now and then, houses; the diggers lived in hollowed trees and in tunnels under the earth nearby. The scene looked so peaceful. Yet they knew that if the men there, diggers or humans, knew of the Nafari walking along this narrow shelf of land, there would be such an outcry, and soon war parties would be scaling the cliff walls. Not that this spelled sure death, outnumbered though they might be. Even diggers, born to climb, would have a hard time getting up the rocks. But eventually the Elemaki would either reach their shelf and force them to fight to the last man, or the Nafari would have to climb higher and higher until they reached the altitudes where men freeze or faint or grow mad.