Earthborn (Homecoming) Read online

  What worried Chebeya most in her own family was the way young Akma seemed to be growing more and more distant from his father. Could the boy be blaming Akmaro for not saving him from the persecution of the sons of Pabulog? It couldn’t be that—if Luet could understand, Akma could also. So what was it that made Akma flee from what had once been a tight connection between him and his father?

  Chebeya mocked herself silently. Why am I worrying about tension between father and son? In a week or a month or a year we’ll all be dead—murdered or dead of hunger or disease. Then what will it matter why Akma didn’t have the same loyalty to his father that he used to have?

  I wish I could talk to Hushidh or Chveya, one of the ancient ravelers. They must have understood better than I do the things that I see. Does Akma hate his father? Is it anger? Fear? I watch the loyalties shift and change, and sometimes it’s obvious why the changes come, and sometimes I have almost no idea. Hushidh and Chveya were never uncertain. They always knew what to do, they were always wise.

  But I am not wise. I only know that my husband is losing our son’s love. And what will I be in Luet’s eyes, her own mother, when I stand by in silence and let these bullies mistreat her?

  Chebeya felt herself filled with a sudden and irresistible resolve. They mean to kill us eventually. Better to die with Luet certain that her mother loves her.

  Chebeya stood upright again.

  The diggers had already looked away from her, but they noticed soon enough that she had stopped her work. They moved toward her.

  Chebeya pitched her voice to be heard clearly by the sons of Pabulog. “Why are you so frightened of me?” she said.

  It worked—one of the boys answered her. The third son, the one called Didul. “I’m not frightened of you!”

  “Then why don’t you push me down, instead of a little girl half your size?” Chebeya let her voice fill with scorn, and saw with pleasure how Didul’s face flushed.

  Around her, other adults were muttering. “Hush. Enough. Quiet now. They’ll beat us all.”

  Chebeya ignored them. She also ignored the digger guards with their upraised whips, who were already almost upon her. “Didul, if you aren’t a coward, take a whip and beat me yourself!”

  One of the diggers’ whips landed on her back. She winced and staggered under the weight of the blow.

  “You’re just like your father!” she cried out to him. “Afraid to do anything yourself!”

  Another blow fell. But then Didul called out. “Stop!”

  The diggers each let one more blow fall before they obeyed him. It brought Chebeya to her knees, and she could feel the blood flowing down her back. But Didul was coming to her, and so she used the precious moments before he arrived. Rising slowly to her feet, she looked him in the eye and spoke to him. “So, the boy Didul has some pride. How could that happen? The children of Akmaro have courage—no matter how you torment them, have you ever heard them beg for mercy? Do you think that if your father were beaten the way you beat these little children, he would be as brave?”

  “Don’t speak of my father, blasphemer!” shouted Didul.

  But Chebeya could see what Didul could not—that she had troubled him. The connection between him and his brothers was just a little weaker because of her words.

  “See what your father teaches you? To bully little children. But you have pride. It makes you ashamed to do what your father tells you to do.”

  Didul took the whip from the hands of one of the diggers. “I’ll show you my pride, blasphemer!”

  “Is it your pride that lets you raise a whip against an unarmed woman?”

  Ah, the words stung, she could see it.

  “No, a true son of Pabulog can only strike out at people who are helpless. Have you ever seen your father stand in battle like a man?”

  “He would if he had any real men to fight!” shouted Didul.

  Chebeya searched her mind for the retort that would work the best. “I think that in your heart, Didul, you understand what your father is doing to you. Why do you think he sent you here to torment us? Why do you think he told you to mistreat the little children? Because he knew that you would be ashamed of yourself for doing it. Because he knew that once you had made little children cry, you would know that you were as low and cowardly as he is, so that he would never have to hear his children taunt him, for he will always be able to answer you, ‘Yes, but who was it who beat up on little girls?’”

  Infuriated, Didul lashed out. The whip caught her across the shoulder and the end of it wrapped around her and caught her on the cheek. Blood splashed into her eyes and she was blinded for a moment.

  “Don’t call my father a coward!” cried Didul.

  “Even at this very moment,” she said, “you hate him for making you the kind of coward who answers a woman’s words with a whip. If the things I said were not the truth, Didul, they wouldn’t make you so angry.”

  “Nothing that you said is true!”

  “Everything I said is true, and the proof of it is that when you walk away from here, these guards will beat me to death, just so you never have to listen to me again.” Chebeya spoke with conviction; she feared that what she was saying just might be the truth.

  “If they beat you it will be to punish you for lying.”

  “If you didn’t believe me, Didul, you would just laugh at what I said.”

  Now she had him. She could see the new thread that bound him to her. She was winning him away, tearing at his loyalty to his father.

  “I don’t believe you,” he said.

  “You believe me, Didul, because every time you hit one of these little children you’re ashamed. I can see it in your eyes. You laugh, just like your brothers, but you hate yourself for it. You’re afraid that you’re just like your father.”

  “I want to be just like my father.”

  “Really? Then why are you here? Your father doesn’t dirty himself by beating up on children with his own hands. He always sends thugs and bullies to do it for him. No, you can’t be like your father, because there’s still a man inside you. But don’t worry—a few more years of beating up on babies and there’ll be no trace of manhood left in your heart.”

  As she talked, Udad, Didul’s next older brother, had come up behind him. “Why are you listening to this witch?” Udad demanded. “Have them kill her.”

  “That’s the voice of your father,” said Chebeya. “Kill anyone who dares to tell you the truth. Only don’t do it yourself. Have someone else do it for you.”

  Udad turned to the diggers. “Why are you standing there, letting her do this? She’s got some kind of magic control of my stupid brother—”

  With a cry of rage, Didul turned around and made as if to lash his brother with the whip. Udad cringed and covered his face with his hands and screeched, “Don’t hit me! Don’t hit me!”

  “There you see it,” said Chebeya. “That’s what you’ll become, when your father is through with you.”

  She could see the last threads binding Didul to Udad turn to rage and shame—a negative connection.

  “But are you already like him, Didul? Or is there a man inside you?”

  Udad, shamed now, backed away. “I’m going to tell Pabul that you’re letting Akmaro’s wife turn you against us all!”

  “Does that frighten you, Didul?” asked Chebeya. “He’s going to tell on you. Does that frighten you?”

  “I’m leaving,” said Didul. “I don’t want to hear any more of your lies.”

  “Yes, leaving me so the guards can kill me,” said Chebeya. “But I promise you that if I die here today, you’ll hear my voice inside your heart forever.”

  Defiant anger sparking in his eyes, Didul turned to the diggers. “I want to see her alive tomorrow, with no more lashes on her than she already has.”

  “That’s not what your father said,” one of them retorted.

  Didul grinned savagely at him. “He said to obey his sons. If this woman is harmed, I’ll have you skinned
alive. Do you doubt me?”

  Ah, the fire in his eyes! Chebeya could see that he had the gift of command. She had kindled his pride and now it was burning, burning in his heart.

  The diggers backed off.

  Didul tossed the whip back to the one who had lent it to him. Then he spoke one more time to Chebeya. “Get back to work, woman.”

  She looked him in the eye. “I obey the lash. But someday, wouldn’t you like to see someone obey you out of true respect?” Despite the pain of the wounds on her back and the blood in her eye, she bent over and picked up her hoe. She scratched ineffectually at the soil. She could hear him walk away.

  “I’ll kill her,” said one of the diggers. “What can he do about it? His father would never approve of him listening to her.”

  “Fool,” said the other. “If he wants his father to kill us, do you think he’ll tell him the truth?”

  “So let’s us tell him first.”

  “Oh, great idea. Go to Pabulog and tell him that his son let this woman talk him down? How long do you think we’d live if we were going around telling that story?”

  Chebeya listened to them with amusement. Her words had had their effect on these diggers, too. It wasn’t much of a plan, to stir up trouble among Pabulog’s sons and soldiers. And they might kill her yet. As it was, she’d be paying for this day’s work in pain for many days to come.

  “That was a stupid thing to do,” someone muttered. “You could have got us all killed.”

  “Who cares?” someone else whispered. “Didn’t Akmaro spread the word for us to think of how we might deliver ourselves? At least she thought of something.”

  Didul and Udad were back where Luet and Akma worked. Luet flinched from them, but Akma stood his ground. How much of what she said had he heard? Perhaps all of it; perhaps little. But he stood his ground.

  Udad reached out and pushed at Akma, who staggered backward but did not fall. There was no surprise in that. No, the surprise came when Didul lunged at Udad and sent him sprawling in the dirt. Udad immediately sprang up, ready to fight his younger brother. “What was that! Do you want me to beat you up?”

  Didul stood and looked him in the eye. “Is that all you can do? Beat up on people who are smaller than you? If you touch me, then you prove that everything she said about us is true.”

  Udad stood there, flustered, confused. Chebeya could see the ties of loyalty shifting even as she watched. Udad, uncertain now, suddenly wanted Didul’s good opinion more than anything, for he was ashamed not to have it; just as Didul, in turn, wanted Chebeya’s good opinion. That was the beginning of loyalty. Wouldn’t that be the perfect vengeance, to turn Pabulog’s own sons against him?

  No, not vengeance. Deliverance. That’s what we’re trying for, to save ourselves, since the Keeper seems unwilling to do it.

  * * *

  “I can’t tell,” said the Oversoul. “Is our plan working or not?”

  Shedemei chuckled wryly. “Well, at least the Keeper noticed us. That dream she sent to Akma. And Chebeya’s sudden impulse to defy Pabulog’s sons. If that was the Keeper.”

  “Yet the Keeper still says nothing to us. We’re a gnat buzzing in the Keeper’s ear. We are brushed away.”

  “So let’s go back and keep buzzing.”

  “The Keeper’s plans will go forward regardless of what we do or don’t do,” said the Oversoul.

  “I hope so,” said Shedemei. “But I do think she cares very much what people do. Down there on Earth, of course, but also here in this ship. She cares what happens.”

  “Maybe all the Keeper cares about is the people of Earth. Maybe she no longer cares about the people of Harmony. Maybe I should go home to Harmony now and tell my otherself that our mission is over and we can let humans there do whatever they want.”

  “Or maybe the Keeper still wants you here,” said Shedemei. Then a new thought occurred to her. “Maybe she still needs the powers of the starship. The cloak of the starmaster.”

  “Maybe the Keeper needs you,” said the Oversoul.

  Shedemei laughed. “What, I have some seeds and embryos up here that she wants me to put down somewhere on Earth? All she has to do is send me a dream and I’ll plant wherever she says.”

  “So we go on waiting,” said the Oversoul.

  “No, we go on prodding,” answered Shedemei. “Like Chebeya did. We roust the old she-bear from her den and goad her.”

  “I’m not sure I like the implications of your metaphor. She-bears are destructive and dangerous when they’ve been goaded.”

  “But they do give you their undivided attention.” Shedemei laughed again.

  “I don’t think you have enough respect yet for the power of the Keeper.”

  “What power? All we’ve seen from the Keeper up to now is dreams.”

  “If that’s all you’ve seen,” said the Oversoul, “then you haven’t been looking.”

  “Really?”

  “The gornaya, for instance. That massif of impossibly high mountains. The ancient geological data from before the departure of humans forty million years ago shows no tectonic formation or movement that could have caused this. The plates in this area weren’t moving in the right direction to cause such incredible folding and uplift. Then, suddenly, the Cocos plate started moving northward with far more speed and force than any tectonic movement ever recorded. It attacked the Caribbean plate far faster than it could be subducted.”

  Shedemei sighed. “I’m a biologist. Geology is barely comprehensible to me.”

  “You understand this, though. A dozen ranges of mountains with peaks above ten kilometers in height. And they were lifted up within the first ten million years.”

  “Is that fast?”

  “’Even now, the Cocos plate is still moving northward three times faster than any other plate on Earth. That means that underneath the Earth’s crust, there’s a current of molten rock that is flowing northward very rapidly—the same current that caused North America to rift along the Mississippi Valley, the same current that crumpled all of Central America into pieces and jammed them together and . . .”

  The Oversoul fell silent.

  “What?”

  “I’m doing a little research for a moment.”

  “Well, pardon me for interrupting,” said Shedemei.

  “This has to have begun before humans left Earth,” said the Oversoul.

  “Yes?”

  “The earthquakes, the volcanos out along the Galapagos ridge—what was it that encased the Earth in ice for a while? In my memory, it was all linked with human misbehavior—with wars, nuclear and biological weapons. But how exactly did those things cause the Earth to become uninhabitable?”

  “I love watching a brilliant mind at work,” said Shedemei.

  “I will have to search all my records from that time period,” said the Oversoul, “and see whether I can rule out the possibility that it was the movement of the Cocos plate, and not the warfare directly, that caused the destruction of the habitable zones of Earth.”

  “You’re saying that the warfare might have caused the Cocos plate to move? That’s absurd.”

  The Oversoul ignored her scoffing. “Why did all human life leave Earth? The diggers and angels managed to survive. I never thought to question it till now, starmaster, but don’t you find it a bit suspicious? Surely some group of humans could have survived. In some equatorial zone.”

  “Please, I know creativity and serendipity are designed into your thinking algorithms,” said Shedemei, “but are you seriously entertaining the notion that human misdeeds could have caused the Cocos plate to move?”

  “I’m saying that perhaps human misdeeds could cause the Keeper of Earth to cause the Cocos plate to move.”

  “And how could she possibly do that?”

  “I can’t imagine any entity of any kind with power enough to move the currents of magma under the crust of the planet,” said the Oversoul. “But I also can’t imagine any natural force that could have caused the
many anomalies that created the gornaya. The world is full of strange and unnatural things, Shedemei. Like the symbiotic interdependence that the diggers and angels used to have. You said yourself that it was artificial.”

  “And my hypothesis is that these changes were deliberately introduced by human beings before they left.”

  “But why would they do it, Shedemei? Whose purpose were they fulfilling? Why would they even care, knowing that they would leave this planet and believing that they would never come back?”

  “I think it’s possible for us to ascribe too many events to the plots and plans of the Keeper of Earth,” said Shedemei. “She causes dreams and influences human behavior. We have no evidence for anything else.”

  “We have no evidence. Or we have the most obvious evidence imaginable. I must do research. There are gaps in my knowledge. The truth has been hidden from me, but I know that the Keeper is involved in all of this.”

  “Search all you want. I’ll be fascinated to know the outcome.”

  “It may be that I’m programmed not to find the truth, you know,” said the Oversoul. “And that I’m programmed not to find the way I’ve been programmed to hide the truth from me.”

  “How circular.”

  “I may need your help.”

  “I may need a nap.” She yawned. “I don’t believe that any computer, even the Keeper of Earth, has power over such things as currents of magma. But I’ll help, if I can. Maybe in pursuing this worthless hypothesis you’ll come across something useful.”

  “At least you’re keeping an open mind,” said the Oversoul.

  “I’m sure you meant that in the nicest possible way,” said Shedemei.

  That night, in their hut, Akmaro and Akma washed and dressed Chebeya’s wounds.

  “You could have been killed, Mother,” said Akma quietly.

  “It was the bravest thing I ever saw,” said Akmaro.

  Chebeya wept silently—in relief that she hadn’t been slaughtered in the field; in delayed fear at what she had dared to do; in gratitude to her husband for praising what she did.

  “Do you see, Akma, what your mother is doing?” said Akmaro.