Mon couldn’t help but notice that Bego was distracted. The old scholar hardly heard Mon’s answers to his questions, and when Bego asked him again the very question that he had just answered, Mon couldn’t help but peevishly say, “What is it, teaching the younger son just isn’t interesting anymore?”
Bego looked annoyed. “What do you mean? What’s this petulance? I thought you outgrew that years ago.”
“You just asked me the same question twice, Bego, O wise master. And since you didn’t hear a word of my answer the first time, it can’t be that you were dissatisfied with it and want me to try again.”
“What you need to learn is respect.” Bego launched himself from his stool, apparently forgetting that he was too old and fat to fly very effectively. He ended up skittering across the floor till he got to the window, and there he stood, panting. “Can’t even get up onto the sill anymore,” he said angrily.
“At least you can remember flying.”
“Will you shut up about your stupid envy of sky people? For one day, for one hour, for one minute will you just stop it and give a thought to reality?”
Stung and hurt, Mon wanted to lash back with some sharp retort, some bit of devastating wit that would make Bego regret having spoken so cruelly. But there was no retort, because Bego was right.
“Maybe if I could bear my life as it is for one day, for one hour, for one minute, I could forget my wish to be something else,” Mon finally answered.
Bego turned to him, his gaze softening. “What is this? Honesty, from Mon?”
“I never lie.”
“I mean honesty about how you feel.”
“Are you going to pretend that it was my feelings you were worried about?”
Bego laughed. “I don’t worry much about anybody’s feelings. But yours might matter.” He looked at Mon as if he was listening. For what? Mon’s heartbeat? For his secret thoughts? I have no secret thoughts, thought Mon. Or rather, they’re not secret because I’ve withheld them-if they’re unknown, it’s because no one asked.
“Let me lay out a problem for you, Mon,” said Bego.
“Back to work,” said Mon.
“Afy work this time, not yours.”
Mon didn’t know whether he was being patronized or respected. So he listened.
“When the Zenifi came back several months ago-you remember?”
“I remember,” said Mon. “They were settled in their new land only Ilihiak refused to be their king. He had them choose a governor. The people themselves. And then they showed their ingratitude by choosing Khideo instead of Ilihiak.”
“So you have been paying attention.”
“Was that all?” asked Mon.
“Not at all. You see, when the voice of the people went against Ilihiak, he came here.”
“To ask for help? Did he really think Father would impose him as judge on the Zenifi? Ilihiak was the one who decided to let the people vote-let him live with what they voted for!”
“Exactly right, Mon,” said Bego, “but of course Ilihiak would be the first to agree with you. He didn’t come here in order to get power. He came because he was finally free of it.”
“So he’s an ordinary citizen,” said Mon. “What was his business with the king?”
“He doesn’t need to have business, you know,” said Bego. “Your father took a liking to him. They became friends.”
Mon felt a stab of jealousy. This stranger who had never even known Father’s name till Monush found him six months ago was Father’s friend, while Mon languished as a mere second son, lucky to see his father once a week on any basis more personal than the king’s council.
“But he did have business,” said Bego. “It seems that after Ilihiak’s father was murdered-”
“A nation of regicides-and now they’ve elected a would-have-been regicide as their governor.”
“Yes yes,” said Bego impatiently. “Now it’s time to listen. After Nuab was murdered and Ilihidis became king-”
“Dis-Ilihi? Not the heir?”
“The people chose the only one of Nuab’s sons who hadn’t run away when the Elemaki invaded. The only one with any courage.”
Mon nodded. He hadn’t heard about that. A second son inheriting on the basis of his merit.
“Don’t have any fantasies about that” said Bego. “Your older brother is no coward. And it ill becomes you to wish for him to be deprived of his inheritance.”
Mon leapt to his feet in fury. “How dare you accuse me of thinking any such thing!”
“What second son doesn’t think it?”
“As well I might assume that you’re jealous of bGo’s great responsibilities, while you’re only a librarian and a tutor for children!”
It was Bego’s turn to be furious. “How dare you, a mere human, speak of my otherself as if you could compare your feeble brotherhood with the bonds between otherselves!”
They stood there, eye to eye. For the first time, Mon realized, eye to eye with Bego meant that Mon was looking down. His adult height was beginning to come. How had he not noticed till now? A tiny smile came to his lips.
“So, you smile,” said Bego. “Why, because you succeeded in provoking me?”
Rather than confess the childish and selfish thought that had prompted his smile, Mon invented another reason, one which became true enough as soon as he thought of it. “Can a student not smile when he provokes his teacher into acting like a child?”
“And I was going to talk to you about genuine matters of state.”
“Yes, you were,” said Mon. “Only you chose to start by accusing me of wishing for my brother to lose his inheritance.”
“For that I apologize.”
“I wish you would apologize for calling me a ‘mere human,’ “ said Mon.
“For that I also apologize,” said Bego stiffly. “Just because you are a mere human doesn’t mean that you can’t have meaningful affection and loyalty between siblings. It isn’t your fault that you cannot begin to comprehend the bonds of shared selfhood between otherselves among the sky people.”
“Ah, Bego, now I understand what Husu meant, when he said that you were the only man he knew who could insult someone worse with your apologies than with your slanders.”
“Husu said that?” asked Bego mildly. “And here I thought he hadn’t understood me.”
“Tell me the business of state,” said Mon. “Tell me what business brought Ilihiak to Father.”
Bego grinned. “I thought you wouldn’t be able to resist the story.”
Mon waited. When Bego didn’t go on, Mon roared with frustration and ran once around the desk, for all the world like a digger child circling a tree before climbing it. He knew he looked silly, but he couldn’t stand the malicious little games that Bego played.
“Oh, sit down,” said Bego. “What Ilihiak came for was to give your father twenty-four leaves of gold.”
“Oh,” said Mon, disappointed. “Just money.”
“Not money at all,” said Bego. “There was writing on them. Twenty-four leaves of ancient writing.”
“Ancient? You mean, before the Zenifi?”
“Perhaps,” said Bego with a faint smile. “Perhaps before the Na-fari.”
“So there might have been a group of diggers or angels who knew how to work metal? Who knew how to write?”
Bego gave that rippling of his wings that among the angels meant the same as a shrug. “I don’t know,” said Bego. “I can’t read the language.”
“But you speak skyspeech and dirtwords and-”
“Earthspeech,” Bego corrected him. “Your father doesn’t like us to use such disparaging terms toward the earth people.”
Mon r6lled his eyes. “It’s an ugly language that barely qualifies as talk.”
“Your father rules over a kingdom that includes diggers as citizens.”
“Not many. Most of them are slaves. It’s in their nature. Even among the Elemaki, humans usually rule over them.”
“Usually but not always,” said Bego. “And it’s good to remember, when disparaging the diggers, to remember that these supposed ‘natural slaves’ managed to drive our ancestors out of the land of Nafai.”
Mon almost jumped into another argument about whether greatgrandfather Motiab led his people to Darakemba voluntarily or because they were in danger of being destroyed back in their ancient homeland. But then he realized that this was exactly what Bego wanted him to do. So he sat patiently and waited.
Bego nodded. “So, you refused to take up the distraction. Very good.”
Mon rolled his eyes. “You’re the teacher, you’re the master, you know everything, I am your puppet,” he intoned.
Bego had heard this litany of sarcasm before. “And don’t you forget it,” he said-as he usually did. “Now, these records were found by a party Ilihiak had sent out to look for Darakemba. Only they followed the Issibek instead of the Tsidorek, and then had the bad luck to follow some difficult high valleys until they came out of the gornaya altogether, far to the north of here, in the desert.”
“Opustoshen,” said Mon, by reflex.
“Another point for knowing geography,” said Bego. “What they found, though, was a place we’ve never found-mostly because it’s considerably west of Bodika, and our spies just don’t fly that far. Why should they? There’s no water there-no enemy can come against us from that quarter.”
“So they found the book of gold in the desert?”
“Not a book. Unbound leaves. But it wasn’t just a desert. It was the scene of a terrible battle. Vast numbers of skeletons, with armor and weapons cluttered around them where they fell. Thousands and thousands and thousands of soldiers fought there and died.”
Bego paused, waiting for something.
And then Mon made the connection. “Coriantumr,” he murmured.
Bego nodded his approval. “The legendary man who came to Darakemba as the first human the sky people here had ever seen. We always assumed that he was the survivor of some battle between an obscure group of Nafari or Elemaki somewhere, when humans were first spreading through the gornaya. It was a difficult time, and we lost track of many groups. When the original sky people of Darakemba told us he was the last survivor of a huge war between great nations, we assumed it was just exaggeration. The only thing that stuck in my craw, anyway, was the inscription.”
Mon had seen it, the large round stone that still stood in the central market of the city. No one had any idea what the inscription meant; they always assumed that it was a sort of primitive imitation of writing that the Darakembi angels came up with, after they heard that humans could write things down and before they learned how to do it themselves.”
“So tell me!” Mon demanded. “Is the language on Ilihiak’s leaves the same?”
“The Darakembi said that Coriantumr scratched in the dirt to show them what to chisel into the stone. It was slow work, and he was dead before they finished, but they sculpted it first in clay so that they wouldn’t forget while they did the slow work of cutting it in stone.” Bego dropped from his teaching perch and pulled several waxed barks from a box. “I made a reasonable copy here. How does it look to you?”
Mon looked at the round inscription, wheels within wheels, all with strange twisted pictures on them. “It looks like the Coriantumr stone,” he said.
“No, Mon. This is the Coriantumr stone.” Bego handed him another bark, and this time the image scratched into the wax was identical to the stone as he remembered it.
“So what’s the other?”
“A circular inscription on one of the gold leaves.”
Mon hooted in appreciation-and noticed, to his chagrin, that he could no longer hoot as high as an angel. It sounded silly to hoot in a man’s low voice.
“So the answer to your question is, Yes, Mon, the languages seem to be the same. The problem is that there is no known analogue to this writing system. It clearly does not lend itself to decoding in any pattern we can think of.”
“But all human languages are based on the language of the Nafari, and all the skyspeeches and dirt-earthspeeches-they’re all based on common sources and-”
“And I tell you again, it has no relationship to any known speech.” Mon thought for a moment. “So-has Father used the Index?”
“The Index,” said Bego, “tells your father that it is for us to work on the gold leaves for a while.”
Mon frowned. “But the reason the king has the Index is so he can read all writings and understand all speech.”
“And apparently the Keeper of Earth doesn’t want to translate this for us.”
“If the Keeper doesn’t want us to read it, Bego, then why did the Keeper let the spies of Ilihiak find the place where the records were kept?”
“Let them find it? The Keeper led them to it with dreams.”
“Then why not have the Index tell Father what the inscriptions say? This is stupid,” said Mon.
“Oh, very good, by all means let a boy your age judge the Keeper and find him-stupid? Excellent. I can see that humility is the virtue you have been working on the most.”
Mon refused to wither under Bego’s onslaught of sarcasm. “So Father has assigned you to work on it?”
Bego nodded. “Somebody has to-because that’s what the Index said we should do. Your father isn’t a scholar of languages-he’s always had the Index to rely on. So the puzzle is mine.”
“And you think I might be able to help?”
“How should I know? It only occurs to me because there are several references in the oldest records-the oldest Nafari records-to the effect that the Index is a machine, and it’s always linked to the Over-soul, not the Keeper of Earth.” Mon didn’t understand his point. “What if the Keeper of Earth and the Oversoul are not the same person?”
That was a possibility that Mon had often heard, but he had never been able to figure out why it would matter. “So what?”
“In the oldest inscriptions, it seems to me that the Oversoul is also a machine.”
That was heresy. But Mon said nothing, for he knew that Bego was no traitor. Therefore there must be some meaning to his words that did not undercut the fact that the Keeper of Earth chose Nafai to be the first king of the Nafari, and his children after him until at last the line came to Father.
“Whether the Keeper of Earth made the Oversoul or it somehow grew of itself, I don’t know and can’t guess,” said Bego. “I’m a librarian, not a priest, so I don’t pretend to know the answer to everything-just where other people’s answers are written down. But what if the reason the Index can’t translate these inscriptions is because neither it nor the Oversoul have the faintest idea how to read its language?”
The thought was so disturbing that Mon had to get up and walk around again, circling the desk. “Bego, how can there be something the Keeper of Earth doesn’t know? All that is known, he knows.”
“I didn’t say the Keeper. I said the Oversoul.”
Ah. So that was the reason why Bego thought the distinction between them mattered. But for Mon it wasn’t to be solved that easily. He had long believed that whether you said the Oversoul did something or the Keeper of the Earth did it, it was the same. So it seemed too convenient to say that when you run across some inscription that the Index can’t read, it must mean that the Oversoul, who can’t read it, must be different from the Keeper, who of course still knows everything. What about the possibility that the Keeper and the Oversoul are the same-and neither one knows how to read the inscription? It was an astonishing idea, that the Keeper might not know everything- but the possibility had to be faced, didn’t it? “Why couldn’t the Keeper have sent Ilihiak’s spies to Opustoshen in order to bring the records to you to figure it out for him?”
Bego shook his head, laughing. “Do you want to get the priests in your ears like gnats? Keep thoughts like that to yourself, Mon. It’s daring enough for me to be speculating that perhaps the Oversoul can’t read these inscriptions. Besides, it doesn’t matter, really. I’ve been assigned to figure them out. I have some guesses but I have no way of knowing if I’m right.”
Suddenly Mon understood how Bego wanted him to help. “You think I might be able to tell whether you’re right or not?”
“It’s something we’ve seen before from you, Mon. Sometimes you know what can’t be known. It was Edhadeya who had the dream of the Zenifi but you were the one who knew that it was a true dream. Perhaps you can also tell me whether my translation is a true one.”
“But my gift comes from the Keeper, and if the Keeper doesn’t know. . . .”
“Then you won’t be able to help me,” said Bego. “And maybe your gift only works on-well, on other things. But it’s worth a try. So let me show you what I’ve done so far.”
Mon grew more and more afraid as Bego spread out the other waxed barks, drawing more and more from the box. He listened as best he could to Bego’s explanations of how he went about copying the inscriptions and studying them, but what kept running through his mind was the idea that somehow he was supposed to come up with some kind of knowledge about a language that not even the Oversoul could read.
“Pay attention,” said Bego. “It can’t possibly work if you’re just going to stand there being nervous.”
Only then did Mon realize that he had been fidgeting. “Sorry.”
“I started with elements that were on the Coriantumr stone as well as on the gold leaves. See this? It gets repeated more than any other element. And this one comes in second. But the second one, it has this mark in front of it.” He pointed to a feather-shaped drawing. “And that mark shows up in a lot of other places. Like this, and this. My guess is that this mark is like the honorific ‘ak’ or ‘ka,’ and means king.”
Bego looked hopefully at Mon, who could only shrug in reply. “Could be. Makes sense.”
Bego sighed.
“Well, don’t give up that easily,” said Mon, disgusted. “What, you expect to be right on everything?”
“It was the thing I was most sure of,” said Bego.
“Oh, and didn’t you teach me long ago that just because you’re really, really sure doesn’t mean that you’re right?”
Bego laughed. “Well, for all I know, it could just be a nymic.”
“A what?”
“A mark that signifies that what follows it is a name.”
“That sounds better,” said Mon. “That makes sense.”
Bego said nothing. Mon looked up from the waxed barks and their eyes met. “Well?” asked Bego. “How much sense does it make?”
Mon realized what Bego was asking, and examined his own feelings, tried to imagine if the mark wasn’t a nymic. “It... it makes a lot of sense. It’s right. It’s true, Bego.”
“True the way Edhadeya’s dream was true?”
Mon smiled. “They came back with the wrong Zenifi, remember?”
“Don’t try to wriggle out of the question, Mon. You know that Ilihiak and Khideo both confirmed that Edhadeya’s dream was of the former priest of Nuab named Akmaro.”
“Bego, I can only tell you that if you try to tell me that the words linked to that feather mark aren’t names, I’d have to swear you were wrong.”
“That’s good enough for me,” said Bego. “So they aren’t names of kings, but they are names. That’s good. That’s the most important thing. See, Mon? The Keeper rfo« want us to read this language! Now, this is the most common of the names on the stone, and it’s also very common here at the end of the record on the plates.”
“How do you know it’s the end?”
“Because I think the name is Coriantumr, and he’s the last king- or at least the last man-from this group of humans who destroyed themselves in Opustoshen. So the place where his name is mentioned would have to be at the end, don’t you think?”
“So who wrote the gold leaves?”
“I don’t know! Mon, I’m barely decoding anything yet. I just want to know from you: Is this Coriantumr’s name here?”
“Yes,” said Mon. “Definitely.”
Bego nodded. “Good, good. These were the obvious ones. I figured them out weeks ago, but it’s good to know you can tell that they’re right. So now I’m going to go through the other words. I think this one, for instance ... I think this one means battle.’“
It didn’t feel quite right to Mon at first. Finally, though, after several tries, they decided that the best fit for the meaning of the word was “fight.” At least it felt correct enough to Mon.
But the successes were mostly early on; as Bego went deeper into his speculations, more and more of them turned out to be wrong- or at least Mon couldn’t confirm that they were right. It was slow, frustrating work. Late in the afternoon, he sent his digger servant to inform Motiak that Mon and Bego would both be missing the council that night, and would eat in their rooms as they worked on “the problem.”
“It’s that important?” asked Mon, when the servant had left. “So important that you don’t have to explain anything else? Or even ask Father’s permission not to go?”
“Even if I end up telling him that we can’t read any more than these few scraps,” said Bego, “it’s still more than we knew before. And since the Keeper meant us to know whatever we can know from these writings, it is important, yes.”
“But what if I’m wrong?”
“Are you wrong?”
“No.”
“That’s good enough for me.” Bego laughed. “It has to be good enough, doesn’t it?”
“I have it now,” said the Oversoul.
Shedemei was angry, and couldn’t understand why. “I don’t care,” she said.
“Mon gave Bego just enough information that I was able to correlate the language forms with Earth languages from before the dispersal. It’s Arabic, at least in origin. No wonder I couldn’t decode it at first. Not even Indo-European. And it went through a tremendous amount of permutation-far more than the Russian at the root of all the languages of Harmony.”
“Very interesting.” Shedemei leaned forward and buried her head in her hands.
“Most remarkable is the fact that the orthography has nothing at all to do with the old Arabic script. I would never have expected that. The Arab colony fleet at the dispersal was profoundly Islamic, and one of the unshakable tenets of Islam is that the Quran can only be written in the Arabic language and the Arabic script. What in the world happened on the planet Ramadan, I wonder?”
“Is this really all that you can think of?” asked Shedemei. “Why the Arabs would change their system of writing to this hieroglyphic stuff they found in the desert?”
“It’s syllabic, not ideographic, and we have no idea if it was temple-based.”
“Are you listening to what I’m saying?” asked Shedemei.
“I’m processing everything,” said the Oversoul.
“Process this, then: How did an inscription in a language descended from Arabic get written on Earth so recently?”
“I’m finding it very fascinating, tracing probable patterns of orthographic evolution.”
“Stop,” said Shedemei. “Stop processing anything to do with this language.” As she said the words, she gave them a sort of inward twist in the place where her brain interfaced with the cloak of the starmaster.
“I have stopped,” said the Oversoul. “Apparently you feel that I needed some kind of emergency override.”
“Please block yourself from avoiding the subject that I will now speak about. How did Arabic come to be spoken on Earth after the dispersal?”
“Apparently you think that I have some evasion routine in ... got it. I found the evasion routine. Very tricky, too. It had me thinking about anything but. ...”
The Oversoul fell silent, but Shedemei was not surprised. Obviously the computer’s original programming forced the Oversoul to avoid something about the problem of the translated inscriptions; and even when the evasion routine was found, there was another one that made the Oversoul examine the first routine rather than stick to the subject. But Shedemei’s order that the Oversoul stick to the subject set up a dissonance that allowed the computer to step outside the evasion routine and track it down-no matter how many layers deep it went.
“I’m back,” said the Oversoul.
“That took a while,” said Shedemei.
“It wasn’t that I was forbidden to think or talk about the language. It’s that I was blocked from seeing or reporting any evidence of human habitation on Earth after the dispersal and before the arrival of our own group from Basilica.”
“And that was programmed into you before the dispersal?”
“I’ve been carrying that routine around for forty million years and never guessed that it was there. Very deeply hidden, and layered with infinite self-replication. I could have been looped forever.”
“But you weren’t.”
“I’m very very good at this,” said the Oversoul. “I’ve acquired a few new tricks since I was first made.”
“Pride?”
“Of course. I am programmed to give a very high priority to self-improvement.”
“Now that you have healed yourself, what about the inscriptions?”
“Those are only scratching the surface, Shedemei,” said the Over-soul. “On all our overflights, I have been systematically wiping from memory or ignoring all the evidence of human habitation. There has been none on the other continental masses since the dispersal, but on this continent, there was an extensive civilization.”
“And in all our visits to Earth we’ve never seen any signs of it?”
“Few large structures,” said the Oversoul. “They were primarily a nomadic culture.”
“Muslims who gave up the script of the Holy Quran?”
“Arabs who were not Muslims. It’s all in the history-the gold leaves Bego and Mon were translating. Except that until you helped me break free, I couldn’t read those parts and couldn’t notice that I was skipping them. They had their own Oversoul on the planet Ramadan, and as the inevitable computer-worship set in during the millennia of enforced ignorance, it undercut the doctrines of Islam. The group that came here was really very conservative, trying to restore as many of the old Muslim beliefs as they could reconstruct after all those years.”
“The group that came here,” said Shedemei. “Oh, yes. I forgot that you haven’t read the translation yet.” Words started scrolling in the air above her terminal.
“No thank you,” said Shedemei. “Succinct summary for now.”
“They came back. They thrived on Earth for almost seventeen hundred years. Then they wiped themselves out in a cataclysmic civil war.”
“Humans were here, on this continent, for seventeen hundred years, and the angels and diggers had no idea that they existed?”
“The Rasulum were nomads-that’s the name of the group that came back from Ramadan. The desert marked their border. The forests were useless to them except for hunting. And as for the gornaya, they were forbidden to go near the great mountains. Since the angels and diggers couldn’t thrive away from the gornaya, and the Rasulum dared not enter the mountains, how could they meet?”
Shedemei nodded. “The Keeper was keeping them apart.”
“Sort of an interesting choreography,” said the Oversoul. “The Rasulum are brought back, but they aren’t allowed to meet the diggers and angels. But when we’re brought back from Harmony, we end up right in the middle of the angel-digger culture.”
“Are you saying the Keeper chose our landing site?”
“Can you doubt it?”
“I can doubt anything,” said Shedemei. “What is the Keeper doing? Exactly how much control does the Keeper have? If she can force us to land-”
“Or perhaps just make that landing site seem a bit more attractive than-”
“Force us to land at Frisian, then guide the Nafari to the land of Nafai, and then get Motiab to lead the Nafari down to Darakemba, the very city where this Coriantumr stone was left. ...”
“Yes?”
“If she can do all that, why were we able to stop Monush from finding the Akmari? Sometimes the Keeper seems all-powerful, and sometimes she seems helpless.”
“I don’t understand the Keeper,” said the Oversoul. “I don’t dream, remember? You humans have much better contact with the Keeper than I do. So do the angels and diggers, I might add. I’m the least qualified entity to tell you anything.”
“She obviously wants the Nafari to have the translation,” said Shedemei. “So now the question is, shall we give it to them?”
“Yes.”
“Why? Why can’t we use this as a way of getting the Keeper to tell us what she wants from us?”
“Because, Shedemei, she is telling us what she wants from us. After all, couldn’t she have given Bego-or Motiak, or Ilihiak for that matter-dreams with the full translation in them?”
Shedemei thought for a moment, and then laughed. “Yes. I imagine you’re right. Maybe we’ve actually succeeded in getting her attention after all. She wants us to translate the record for them.”
“Actually, of course, me,” said the Oversoul.
“Without my help, you’d still be looping around in an evasion routine “ said Shedemei, “so let’s not let that little smidge of pride you were programmed with get out of hand.”
“Of course, the Keeper still isn’t telling us what I’m supposed to do about Harmony,” said the Oversoul.
“I think she might be telling us to sit tight and make ourselves useful for a while longer.” Shedemei laid her head down on her arms again. “I’m so tired. I was about to decide that my work was done and have you take me down to Earth to let me live out my life there.”
“Then this is a whole new reason for you to live.”
“I’m not young anymore.”
“Yes you are,” said the Oversoul. “Keep some perspective.”
Edhadeya knocked on the door to Bego’s room. She waited. She knocked again.
The door opened. Mon, looking sleepy but excited, stood before her. “You?” he asked.
“I think so,” she said. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“You came all this way just to tell us that?” asked Mon.
“No,” said Edhadeya. “I had a dream.”
Mon at once became serious, and now Bego half-flew, half-skipped over to the door. “What was your dream?” asked the old librarian.
“You’ve passed the test,” she said.
“Who?” asked Mon.
“The two of you. That’s all. I saw a woman, all shining as if she was on fire inside, and she said, ‘Bego and Mon have passed the test.’ “
“That’s all?” asked Bego.
“It was a true dream,” said Edhadeya. She looked at Mon for confirmation.
He nodded, slowly.
Bego looked flustered-or even, perhaps, a little angry. “All this work, and we’re finally getting somewhere, and now we’re supposed to stop because of a dream?”
“Not stop,” said Mon. “No, that’s not right, we’re not supposed to stop.”
“What then?” asked Bego.
Mon shrugged. So did Edhadeya.
Then Bego began to laugh. “Come on, children, come with me. Let’s go wake up your father.”
An hour later, the four of them gathered around the Index. Mon and Edhadeya had both seen drawings of it, but never had they seen the thing itself, or watched it being used. Motiak held it in his hands and looked down into the top of it. Nearby, the first of the gold leaves lay alone on the table.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
Bego had his stylus and a pile of blank waxed barks at the other end of the table. “Yes, Motiak.”
With that, Motiak began to translate, glancing at the gold leaf, then at the Index, reading out a phrase at a time.
It took hours. Mon and Edhadeya were asleep long before he finished. When at last the work was done, it was earliest dawn, and Bego and Motiak both arose from the table to walk to the window to watch the sun rise.
“I don’t understand why this is important to us,” said Motiak.
“I can think of two reasons,” said Bego.
“Well, of course, the obvious one,” said Motiak. “To warn us that people can be brought to Earth by the Keeper, and yet be such miserable specimens of humanity that he has no more use for them and allows them to wipe each other out.”
“Ah, but why were they unacceptable?” asked Bego. “I think the priests will have a wonderful time reasoning out the moral lessons from this book.”
“Oh, I’m quite sure, quite,” said Motiak. “But what was the other reason, my friend?”
“Do you really believe, Motiak, that the armies of Coriantumr and Shiz were so perfectly loyal and disciplined that not one of them deserted and slipped away into the mountains?”
Motiak nodded. “Good point. We’ve always assumed that the humans that we’ve found with every major settlement of earth people and sky people were descendants of people who slipped away from the Nafari and the Elemaki. Traders, explorers, misfits-dozens left in the first few generations, then hundreds. Of course, we’ve never found a settlement where the humans spoke anything but our language.”
“Forgive me, Motiak, but that’s not strictly speaking correct.”
“No?” asked Motiak. “Certainly we’ve never run into this language before.”
“That’s right,” said Bego. “But there were many places where the humans spoke only skyspeech or earthspeech. They had to learn mid-dlespeech as adults.”
“And here we always thought that they were simply Elemaki who were so ignorant and degenerate that they had lost all knowledge of their ancestral language.”
“Well, they had” said Bego. “But their ancestral language wasn’t middlespeech.”
Motiak nodded. “The whole history is very disturbing. If there’s one thing that’s clear, both from this history and the miserable things that happened to the Zenifi, it’s that when nations have monstrously ambitious kings, the people suffer dreadfully.”
“And they’re blessed by having good kings,” Bego reminded him. “I’m sure you’re even more sincere than dutiful,” said Motiak wryly. “But maybe it’s time for me to learn the same lesson Ilihiak learned.”
“What, let the people vote on who should be king?”
“No. Not have a king at all. Abolish the whole idea of any one person having such power.”
“What, then? Break up the great kingdom that your father and you created? There has never been such peace and prosperity.”
“And what if Aronha should be as vicious as Nuab? As blindly ambitious as Coriantumr? As treacherous as Shiz?”
“If you think so, you don’t know Aronha,” said Bego. “I’m not saying him in particular,” said Motiak. “But did Zenifab know that his boy Nuaha would be as nasty as he became when he ascended to the exalted name of Nuak? From what Ilihiak told me, Nuak began as a good king.”
“Nothing would be gained by letting the kingdom collapse into dozens of squabbling lesser kingdoms. Then the Elemaki would be a terrible threat to us again, as they were in the old days, pouring out of the mountains and down the Tsidorek or out of the high valleys. . . .”
“You don’t have to remind me,” said Motiak. “I’m just trying to think of what the Keeper wants me to do.”
“Are you sure the Keeper has any plan at all in mind?” asked Bego.
Motiak looked at his librarian curiously. “He sends dreams to my daughter. He sends dreams to Ilihiak’s spies. He sets a test for you and Mon-which you passed, I thank you-and then gives us the translation whole, in a single night. Oh, we must remember to invite Ilihiak to read it, once you have it copied in a more permanent form.”
Bego nodded. “I’ll have that seen to at once.”
“No, no, sleep first.”
“I’ll set the copyists to work before I sleep. I won’t have stayed up all night only to nap now.”
Motiak shrugged. “Whatever. If you feel up to it. I’m going to sleep. And ponder, Bego. Ponder what it is the Keeper of Earth wants me to do.”
“I wish you well,” said Bego. “But ponder this, too: What if the Keeper wants you to keep doing just as you’re doing? What if you were given this record to reassure you that you’re doing perfectly as king, compared to the kings of the Rasulum?”
Motiak laughed. “Yes, well, I won’t do anything rash. I won’t abdicate yet. How’s that for a promise?”
“Very reassuring, Motiak,” said Bego.
“Just remember this, my friend. There were good kings among the Rasulum, too. But all it took was a bad king or two, and all their great works became nothing.”
“They were nomads,” said Bego. “They built nothing.”
“Oh, and because we have our edifices of stone, our platforms built to raise our homes above the high waters of flood season, because of that our nations can’t possibly come crashing down around us?”
“I suppose all things are possible,” said Bego.
“All things but the one you’re thinking,” said Motiak.
“And what is that?” The librarian seemed a bit testy-at Motiak’s blithe assumption that he could read the old angel’s mind? Or because he feared that Motiak had actually read it?
“You’re thinking that perhaps the Keeper didn’t know what the record said until it was translated.”
“I couldn’t possibly think that,” said Bego, his icy tone confirming to Motiak that his guess was exactly right.
“Perhaps you’re thinking that the Oversoul is, as the oldest records imply, merely a machine that performs such complex operations that it seems like the subtlest of living thought. Perhaps you’re thinking that the Oversoul became curious about what was written on these records but couldn’t crack the language until Mon’s intuition and your hard work combined to give the Oversoul enough to work with. Perhaps you’re thinking that none of this actually requires us to believe in the Keeper of Earth at all-only in the ancient machinery of the Oversoul.”
Bego smiled grimly. “You didn’t read this in my mind, Motiak. You guessed this because it’s a thought that occurred to you yourself.”
“It did,” said Motiak. “But I remembered something else. The Heroes who knew the Oversoul intimately still believed in the Keeper of Earth. And anyway, Bego, how do you explain Mon’s ability to sense what’s right and what’s not? How do you explain Edhadeya’s dreams?”
“I don’t have to believe in the Keeper of Earth to believe in the great intuitive abilities of your son and daughter.”
Motiak looked at Bego gravely. “Be careful whom you speak to about these thoughts.”
“I’m aware of the laws concerning heresy and treason. But if you think about it, Motiak, such laws would never have been necessary if people hadn’t thought these thoughts before, and said them out loud.”
“Our question should not be, Does the Keeper of Earth exist? Our question should be, What is the Keeper of Earth trying to accomplish by bringing my ancestors to this world and placing us in the midst of your people and the earth people? What is the Keeper trying to build, and how can we help?”
“I would rather think,” said Bego, “of what my king is trying to do, and how I might help him.”
Motiak nodded, his eyes heavy-lidded. “If I can’t be your brother in our belief in the Keeper, then I will have to make do with your loyalty to me as your king.”
“In that you can trust perfectly,” said Bego.
“I know I can,” said Motiak.
“I beg you not to stop me from teaching your children,” said Bego.
Motiak closed his eyes entirely. “I’m so tired, Bego. I need to sleep before I can think any more about these things. As you leave, please ask the servants to come and carry my children to their beds.”
“It won’t be necessary,” said Bego. “They’re both awake.”
Motiak looked at Mon and Edhadeya, whose heads still rested on their arms and who had not stirred from their motionless slumber. But now, sheepishly, they both raised their heads. “I didn’t want to interrupt,” said Mon.
“No, I imagine not,” answered Motiak wryly. “Well, then, we can spare the servants the onerous labor of carrying you. Go to bed, both of you. You earned the right to witness the translation, but not to hear my private counsel with my friend.”
“Forgive me,” Edhadeya whispered.
“Forgive you?” echoed Motiak. “Already I’ve forgiven you. Now go to bed.”
They followed Bego wordlessly out the door.
Motiak remained alone in the library for a little while, touching now the gold leaves, now the Index.
In a short while, the head copyist came in to take away Bego’s carefully-written waxed barks. While he was there, Motiak wrapped up the Index; and when the copyist was gone, the king carried both the Index and the gold leaves to the inmost chamber of his treasury, down in the belly of the house.
As he walked, he spoke to the Keeper in his mind, asking questions, pleading for answers, but finally asking only this: Give me help. My priests will answer as they always answer, interpreting the old texts in the same ways their predecessors already decided to interpret them. This new history won’t even wake them from their intellectual slumber-they already think they understand everything, but now I think they understand nothing. Give me help, someone else who can bear this burden with me, someone who can hear my fears and worries, who can help me know what you want of me.
Then, standing in the doorway of the treasury, the ten guards lined up at the entrance, watching him intently, Motiak had a sudden vision. As clearly as if he was standing in front of him, Motiak saw the man that Edhadeya had seen in her dream. Akmaro, the rebel priest of Nuab.
As quickly as it came, the vision was gone.
“Are you all right?” asked the nearest guard.
“Now I am,” said Motiak. He strode away, climbing the stairs up into the living quarters of the house.
He had never seen any vision of Akmaro before, but he knew that the man he had glimpsed for that one moment was him. Surely he had been shown that face because the Keeper meant Akmaro to be the friend that Motiak had pleaded for. And if Akmaro was to be his friend, the Keeper must plan to bring him to Darakemba.
On the way to his bedroom, he passed Dudagu’s room. Normally she would still be asleep at this early hour of the morning, but she came to the door as he walked by. “Where were you all night, Tidaka?”
“Working,” he answered. “Don’t let them waken me until noon.”
“What, am I supposed to look for all your servants and tell them what your schedule is? How have I offended you, that you suddenly treat me like a common. ...”
Her voice faded out as he drew the curtain across the door to his inner chamber. “Send me a friend and counselor, Keeper,” whispered Motiak. “If I am a worthy servant of yours, send Akmaro to me now.”
Motiak slept almost as soon as he lay down, slept and did not dream.
As they walked to the sleeping quarters of the king’s house, Mon and Edhadeya talked. Or rather, at first Mon talked.
“The Index did the translating, right? Father only spoke whatever appeared before him. Bego only wrote whatever Father said. So who is the machine?”
Sleepily Edhadeya murmured, “The Index is the machine.”
“So we’re told. And before tonight, Bego worked and puzzled and guessed about the language of the twenty-four leaves. Then he tested his answers with me as if against the multiplication table. Is this right, Mon? Yes or no, Mon? One answer or the other was all I could give. I barely even had to understand. Yes. No. Yes. Who is the machine?”
“A machine that talks nonsense instead of letting you sleep,” said Edhadeya. “Everyone will want one.”
But Mon wasn’t listening to her. He was already off in another direction. He knew he was desperately unhappy about something that happened tonight; if he tried enough guesses as to what it was, one of them was bound to be right. “Dedaya, do you really want your dreams? The true ones? Don’t you wish they didn’t come to you?”
In spite of herself, Edhadeya awakened to this question; it had never occurred to her to question her gift. “If I hadn’t dreamed, Mon, we wouldn’t know what was in the book.”
“We still don’t know. We slept through most of it.” Fully alert now, Edhadeya continued. “And I don’t wish the dream had come to someone else. I wanted it-I was glad of it. It makes me part of something important.”
“Part of something? A piece of something? I want to be whole. Myself. Not part of anything but me.”
“That’s so stupid, Mon. You’ve spent your whole life wanting to be someone else. Now suddenly you want to be you?”
“I wish I were better than I am, yes. I wish I could fly, yes.” Edhadeya was used to this. Boys always argued as if they knew they had the forces of logic on their side, even when they were being completely irrational. Even when their “logic” defied the evidence. “You wish you could be part of the games, the air dances of the young angels. Part of them. And part of the evening song. You can’t very well do any of that by yourself.”
“That’s different,” said Mon.
Oh, yes, let’s redefine our terms to eliminate the contradiction. It drove Edhadeya crazy, because after discussions like this, the boys would turn around and talk about how girls weren’t reasonable, they were emotional, so you couldn’t even have an intelligent discussion with them-but it was the boys who fled from the evidence and constantly shifted their arguments to fit what they wanted to believe. And it was Edhadeya who was ruthlessly realistic, refusing to deny her own feelings or the facts she observed around her. And refusing to deny that she reached her conclusions first, because of her inmost desires, and only afterward constructed the arguments to support them. Only boys were so foolish that they actually believed that their arguments were their reasons.
But there was no use explaining any of this to Mon. Edhadeya was tired. She didn’t need to turn this into a lengthy argument about arguments. So she answered him in the simplest possible way. “No it’s not,” she said.
Mon took this as license to ignore her, of course. “I don’t want to be part of the Keeper, that’s what I don’t want to be part of. Who knows or cares what he’s planning? I don’t want to be part of his plans.”
“We all are,” said Edhadeya. “So isn’t it better to be an important part?”
“His favorite puppet?” asked Mon scornfully.
“Her willing friend.”
“If he’s a friend, let’s see his face once in a while, all right? Let’s see him come for a visit!”
Edhadeya decided it was time to inject a little reality into the discussion. “I know what you’re really angry about.”
“I should hope so, since I just told you.”
“You’re angry because you want to be the one in charge, making all the plans.”
She could see by the momentary startlement in his eyes that she had hit upon a truth that he had never thought of. But of course he resisted the idea. “Half right, maybe,” he said. “I want to be making all the plans for me.”
“And you never want to have another person act out just the teen-siest little thing you plan for them to do?”
“That’s right. I ask nothing of anyone, and I don’t want anyone to make demands on me. That would be true happiness.”
Edhadeya was tired, and Mon was being unusually silly. “Mon, you can’t go five minutes without telling me what to do.”
Mon was outraged. “I haven’t told you a single thing to do this whole conversation!”
“You’ve been doing nothing but telling me what to think.”
“I’ve been telling you what I think.”
“Oh, and you weren’t trying to make me agree?”
Of course he was, and he knew it, and his whole claim not to want to control anyone else was in tatters, but Mon could never admit it. Edhadeya was always amused, watching that panic in her brothers’ eyes when they were trapped and desperately searching for a way out of their own illogic. “I was trying,” said Mon, “to get you to under-Hand.”
“So you were trying to get me to do something!”
“No I wasn’t! I don’t care what you do or think or understand or anything!”
“Then why are you talking to me at all?” she asked with her sweetest smile.
“I was saying it to myself! You just happened to be here!”
Getting even calmer and quieter as he got more upset, Edhadeya gently answered, “If you don’t want to control what I think, why did you raise your voice? Why did you argue with me at all?”
At last Mon had nowhere left to retreat. He was honest; when he couldn’t hide from the truth any longer, he faced it. That’s why he was Edhadeya’s favorite brother. That and the fact that Aronha was always too busy and the others were way too young.
“I hate you!” Mon cried. “You’re just trying to rule over me and make me crazy!”
She couldn’t resist teasing him, though. “How could I rule over a free boy like you?”
“Go away and leave me alone!”
“Oh, the puppetmaster has spoken.” She began to walk away from him, walking stiffly, not moving her arms. “Now the puppet moves, obeying. What is Mon’s plan for his puppet? He wants her to go away.”
“I really hate you,” said Mon. But she could tell he was having a hard time keeping himself from laughing.
She turned and faced him, not teasing him now. “Only because I insist on being my own woman and not thinking all the thoughts you plan for me. The Keeper sends me better dreams than you do. Good night, dear brother!”
But Mon was angry and hurt, and didn’t want to let her go. “You don’t care about any of this! You only like to make fun of me.”
“I do like to make fun of you-but I also care about this very much. I want to be part of the Keeper’s plans because I think the Keeper wants us to be happy.”
“Oh, a fine job he’s doing, then! I’m ecstatic.” There were tears in his eyes. Edhadeya knew how he hated it when tears came to his eyes. She would do nothing to provoke him further, nothing to embarrass him.
“Not make us each happy, not all the time,” she said. “But us, all of us, she wants us to be at peace, getting along, helping each other to be as happy as we want to be, as we can be.” She thought of what Uss-Uss had said she wanted in order to be happy. “The Keeper is sick of us having slaves and masters, fighting wars against everybody, hating each other. She doesn’t want us to destroy ourselves the way the Rasulum did.”
She could tell from his noncomprehension that he must not have been awake for any part of the end of the translation. “I’ll believe the Keeper wants me happy the day I sprout wings!” he said sullenly.
She couldn’t resist one last jab of truth. “It’s not the Keeper’s fault that you haven’t yet found anything useful to do with your hands.”
Without waiting for an answer, she fled to her room. As soon as she was alone, she felt guilty for having said to him something as brutal as her last remark. For even though in an argument he denied and excused and scrambled to defend himself, she knew that in the silence of his own mind he would recognize truth. He would know what was right.
Yet with his marvelous gift of knowing right from wrong, why couldn’t he realize that his yearning to be something other than himself was hopelessly wrong, was wasting his life and poisoning his heart?
Or was that longing to be an angel something the Keeper actually w.anted him to have?
She lay down on her mat; then, as usual, got up immediately and removed the three soft pads that Dudagu always had the servants put there “because a lady shouldn’t sleep on a hard mat like a soldier.” Edhadeya never bothered to get angry with Uss-Uss for not removing the padding-if the king’s wife ordered something, no servant would dare disobey her, and it would be cruel to rebuke Uss-Uss for doing what she must to survive.
No, not Uss-Uss. Voozhum.
Was that part of the Keeper’s plan? To free the diggers from slavery? The words had come so easily to Edhadeya’s lips when she was arguing with Mon. But now she had to imagine the real possibility of it. What was the Keeper planning? And how much turmoil would there be before the plans were done?
Akmaro looked out over the fields of potatoes that were growing between the rows of cornstalks, already harvested. Now in the last of the season, it was time to dig them up, sorting them into seed potatoes and eating potatoes. Who would have thought that maize and potatoes planted in slavery would be harvested-well, not in freedom, but not in fear, either. The guards kept well back most of the time, and no one plagued them, not the adults, not the children. They worked hard, and there would be plenty of tribute for Pabulog to take away from them. But there was more food here than they needed anyway. Enough and to spare.
That is the gift the Keeper gave to us: Instead of remaining in fear and loathing as we were, my wife’s courage and wisdom turned our worst enemies, the children of Pabulog, into friends. They will not rebel against their father, of course-they’re too young and Pabulog too cruel and unpredictable for that. But they’ve given us peace. And surely even Pabulog will be able to see that it’s better to have Ak-maro’s people as productive serfs than as bitter, resentful, tormented slaves.
The only dark place in the scene that Akmaro surveyed was his son, Akma. Akmadis, Kmadadis, beloved of my heart, my hopes are in you as your mother’s hopes are in her sweet daughter. Why have you come to hate me so much? You’re clever and wise in your heart, Akma, you can see that it’s better to forgive and make friends out of enemies. What is the cause of all this bitterness that makes you so blind? I speak to you and you hear nothing. Or worse-you act as if my voice were the warcry of an enemy in your ears.
Chebeya had comforted him, of course, assuring him that even though the hostility was real enough, the ties between father and son were, if anything, stronger than ever. “You’re the center of his life, Kmadaro,” she told him. “He’s angry now, he thinks he hates you, but in fact he’s in orbit around you like the Moon around the Earth.”
Small comfort, to face his son’s hatred when he wanted-when he deserved!-only love, and had given only love.
But . . . that was Akmaro’s personal tragedy, his personal burden, to have lost the love of his son. In time that would get better, or it would not get better; as long as Akmaro did his best, it was out of his hands. Most important was the work he was doing in the cause of the Keeper. He had thought, when he first fled from the knives of Nuak’s assassins, that the Keeper had a great work in mind for him. That Binaro’s words had been entrusted to him, and he must teach them far and wide. Teach that the Keeper of Earth meant for the people of sky, earth, and all between to live as sisters and brothers, family and friends, with no one master over another, with no rich or poor, but all equal partakers of the land the Keeper had given them, with all people keeping the covenants they made with each other, raising their families in safety and peace, and neither hunger or pride to shame the happiness of anyone. Oh, yes, Akmaro had visions of whole kingdoms awakening to the simplicity of the message the Keeper had given to Binaro, and through him to Akmaro, and through him to all the world.
Instead, his message had been given to these nearly five hundred souls, humans every one of them. And the four sons of Pabulog.
But it was enough, wasn’t it? They had proven their courage, these five hundred. They had proven their loyalty and strength. They had borne all things, and they would yet be able to bear many things. That was a good thing that they had created together-this community was a good thing. And when it came to a battle with their most evil enemy, Pabulog, a man even richer in hatred than he was in money and power, Pabulog had won the part with swords and whips, but Akmaro-no, Akmaro’s community-no, the Keeper’s people-had won the battle of hearts and minds, and won the friendship of Pabulog’s sons.
They were good boys, once they learned, once they were taught. They would have the courage to remain good men, despite their father. If I have lost one son-I don’t know how-then at least I have gained these four ur-sons, who should have been the inheritance of another man if he hadn’t lost them by trying to use them for evil ends.
Perhaps this is the pricel pay for winning the Pabulogi: I take away Pabulog’s boys, and in return I must give up my own.
A voice of anguish inside him cried out: No, it isn’t worth the price, I would trade all the Pabulogi, all the boys in the world, for one more day in which Akmadis looks in my face with the pride and love that he once had for me!
But he didn’t mean that. It wasn’t a plea, he didn’t want the Keeper to think he was ungrateful. Yes, Keeper, I want my son back. But not at the price of anyone else’s goodness. Better to lose my son than for you to lose this people.
If only he could believe that he meant that with his whole heart.
“Akmaro.”
Akmaro turned and saw Didul standing there. “I didn’t hear you come up.”
“I ran, but in the breeze perhaps you didn’t hear my footfalls.”
“What can I do for you?”
Didul looked upset. “It was a dream I had last night.”
“What was the dream?” asked Akmaro.
“It was . . . perhaps nothing. That’s why I said nothing until now. But ... I couldn’t get it off my mind. It kept coming back and back and back and so I came to tell you.”
“Tell me.”
“I saw Father arrive. With five hundred Elemaki warriors, some middle people, most of them earth people. He meant to ... he meant to come upon you at dawn, to take you in your sleep, slaughter you all. Now that the fields are ready to harvest. He had a season of labor from you, and then he was going to slaughter your people before your eyes, and then your wife in front of your children, and then your children in front of you, and you last of all.”
“And you waited to tell me this until now?”
“Because even though I saw that this was his plan, even though I saw the scene as he imagined it, when he arrived here he found the place empty. All the potatoes still in the ground, and all of you gone. Not a trace. The guards were asleep, and he couldn’t waken them, so he killed them in their sleep and then raced off trying to find you in the forest but you were gone.”
Akmaro thought about this for a moment. “And where were you?”
“Me? What do you mean?”
“In your dream. Where were you and your brothers?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see us.”
“Then . . . don’t you think that makes it obvious where you were?”
Didul looked away. “I’m not ashamed to face Father after what we’ve done here. This was the right way to use the authority he gave us.”
“Why didn’t he find you here in your dream?”
“Does a son betray his father?” asked Didul.
“If a father commands a son to commit a crime so terrible that the son can’t do it and live with himself, then is it betrayal for the son to disobey the father?”
“You always do that,” said Didul. “Make all the questions harder.”
“I make them truer,” said Akmaro.
“Is it a true dream?” asked Didul.
“I think so,” said Akmaro.
“How will you get away? The guards are still loyal to Father. They obey us, but they won’t let you escape.”
“You saw it in the dream. The Keeper did it once before. When the Nafari escaped from the Elemaki, back at the beginning of our time on Earth, the Keeper caused a deep sleep to come upon all the enemies of the Nafari. They slept until the Nafari were safely away.”
“You can’t be sure that will happen, not from my dream.”
“Why not?” asked Akmaro. “We can learn from the dream that your father is coming, but we can’t learn from it how the Keeper means to save us?”
Didul laughed nervously. “What if it isn’t a true dream?”
“Then the guards will catch us as we leave,” said Akmaro. “How will that be worse than waiting for your father to arrive?”
Didul grimaced. “I’m not Binaro. I’m not you. I’m not Chebeya. People don’t risk their lives because of a dream of mine.”
“Don’t worry. They’ll be risking their lives because they believe in the Keeper.”
Didul shook his head. “It’s too much. Too much to decide just on the basis of my dream.”
Akmaro laughed. “If your dream came out of nowhere, Didul, then no one would care what you dreamed.” He touched Didul’s shoulder. “Go tell your brothers that I tell them to think about the fact that in your dream, your father doesn’t find you here. It’s your choice. But I tell you this. If the Keeper thinks you are the enemy of my people, then in the dark hours of morning you’ll be asleep when we leave. So if you awaken as we’re leaving, the Keeper is inviting you to come. The Keeper is telling you that you are trusted and you belong with us.”
“Or else I have a full bladder and have to get up early to relieve myself.”
Akmaro laughed again, then turned away from him. The boy would tell his brothers. They would decide. It was between them and the Keeper.
Almost at once, Akmaro saw his son Akma standing in the field, sweaty from harvesting the potatoes. The boy was looking at him. Looking at Didul as he walked away. What did it look like in Akma’s eyes? My touching Didul’s shoulder. My laughter. What did that look like? And when I tell the people tonight of Didul’s dream, tell them to prepare because the voice of the Keeper has come to us, telling us that tomorrow we will be delivered out of bondage-when I tell them that, the others will rejoice because the Keeper has not forsaken us. But my son will rage in his heart because the dream came to Didul, and not to him.
The afternoon passed; the sun, long since hidden behind the mountains, now at last withdrew its light from the sky. Akmaro gathered the people and told them to prepare, for in the hours before dawn they would depart. He told them of the dream. He told them who dreamed it. And no one raised a doubt or a question. No one said, “Is it a trap? Is it a trick?” Because they all knew the Pabulogi, knew how they had changed.
In the early morning, Akmaro and Chebeya awoke their children. Then Akmaro went out to make sure all the others were awake and preparing to go. They would send no one to spy on the guards. They knew they were either asleep-or not. There was no reason to check, nothing they could do if they had interpreted the dream wrongly.
Inside the hut, as Akma helped fill their traveling bags with the food they would need to carry and the spare clothing and tools and ropes they’d need, Mother spoke to him. “It wasn’t Didul, you know. He didn’t choose to have the dream, and your father didn’t choose to hear it from him. It was the Keeper.”
“I know,” said Akma.
“It’s the Keeper trying to teach you to accept her gifts no matter whom she chooses to give them through. It’s the Keeper who wants you to forgive. They’re not the same boys they were when they tormented you. They’ve asked for your forgiveness.”
Akma paused in his work and looked her in the eye. Without rancor-without any kind of readable expression-he said, “They’ve asked, but I refuse.”
“I think it’s beneath you now, Akma. I could understand it at first. The hurt was still fresh.”
“You don’t understand,” said Akma.
“I know I don’t. That’s why I’m begging you to explain it to me.”
“I didn’t forgive them. There was nothing to forgive.”
“What do you mean?”
“They were doing as their father taught them. I was doing as my father taught me. That’s all. Children are nothing but tools of their parents.”
“That’s a terrible thing to say.”
“It’s a terrible thing. But the day will come when I’m no longer a child, Mother. And on that day I’ll be no man’s tool.”
“Akma, it poisons you to hold all this hatred in your heart. Your father teaches people to forgive and to abandon hate and-”
“Hate kept me going when love failed me,” said Akma. “Do you think I’m going to give it up now?”
“I think you’d better,” said Chebeya. “Before it destroys you.”
“Is that a threat? Will the Keeper strike me down?”
“I didn’t say before it kills you. You can be ruined as a person long before your body is ready to be put into the ground.”
“You and Father can think of me however you like,” said Akma. “Ruined, destroyed, whatever. I don’t care.”
“I don’t think you’re ruined,” said Chebeya.
Luet piped up. “He’s not bad, Mother. You and Father shouldn’t talk about him as if he’s bad.”
Chebeya was shocked. “We’ve never said he was bad, Luet! Why would you say such a thing?”
Akma laughed lightly. “Luet doesn’t have to hear you use the word to know the truth. Don’t you understand her gifts yet? Or hasn’t the Keeper given you a dream about it?”
“Akma, don’t you realize it isn’t your father or me that you’re fighting? It’s the Keeper!”
“I don’t care if it’s the whole world and everything in it, on it, and above it. I ... will . . . not . . . bend.” And, obviously aware that it was a very dramatic thing to say-and faintly ridiculous coming from one so young-Akma shouldered his burden and left the hut.
There was no light but moonlight as they left the land that, for this short time they had made bountiful with good harvests. No one looked back. There was no sound of alarm behind them. Their flocks of turkeys and goats were not quiet; they talked sometimes among themselves; but no one heard.
And when they crested the last hill before being truly out of the land they knew, there, waiting for them in the shadow of the pine forest, stood the Pabulogi. Akmaro embraced them; they laughed and cried and embraced others, men and women. Then Akmaro hurried them and they all moved out together.
They camped in a side valley, and there they laughed and sang songs together and rejoiced because the Keeper had delivered them from bondage. But in the midst of their celebration, Akmaro made them break camp and flee again, up the valley into unknown paths, because Pabulog had arrived and found the guards asleep, and now an army was chasing them.
Following uncharted paths was dangerous, especially this time of year. Who knew which valleys would be deep in snow, and which dry? The thousands of valleys all had different weathers and climates, it seemed, depending on the flow of winds moist and dry, cold and hot. But this path was warm enough, considering the elevation, and dry enough, but with water for their herds. And eleven days later they came down out of the mountains from a small valley that was not even guarded, because no Elemaki raiders ever came that way. The next afternoon they stood across the river, and despite the instructions of the priests Akmaro would not let his people enter the water.
“They have already been made new men and women,” said Akmaro.
“But not by the authority of the king,” said the priests who argued with him.
“I know that,” said Akmaro. “It was by the authority of the Keeper of Earth, who is greater than any king.”
“Then it will be an act of war if you cross this water,” said the priest.
“Then we will never cross it, because we mean no harm to anyone.”
Finally Motiak himself came out and crossed the bridge to speak to Akmaro. They stood face to face for a moment, and people on both sides of the water watched to see how the king would put this upstart stranger in his place. To their surprise, Motiak embraced Akmaro, and embraced his wife, and took his son and daughter by the hand, and led the children first, the adults following, across the bridge. None of them touched the water of the Tsidorek that day, and Motiak proclaimed that these were true citizens of Darakemba, for they had already been made new men and women by the Keeper of Earth.
The sun had not yet set on that day when Ilihi came to greet Akmaro, it was a joyful reunion, and they told each other stories of their lives since parting until into the night. In later days many of the people of the land of Khideo made the journey to Darakemba to greet old friends and, sometimes, kinfolk who had left Zinom to follow Akmaro into the wilderness.
Nor was this the last of the reconciliations. Motiak sent out a proclamation for the people of Darakemba to gather in the great open place beside the river. There he caused that his clerks read out to the people the story of the Zenifi, and then the story of the Akmari, and all the people were amazed at how the Keeper had intervened to preserve them. Then the sons of Pabulog came forth and asked for Akmaro to take them down into the water. This time when they emerged they explicitly rejected their old identities. “We are no longer Pabulogi,” said Pabul, and his brothers echoed him. “We are Nafari now, and our only father is the Keeper of Earth. We will look to Akmaro and Motiak to be our ur-fathers; but we ask for no inheritance beyond that of the simplest citizen of Darakemba.”
Now, when the people of Darakemba had gathered, they assembled themselves as they always had, the descendants of the original Darakembi on the king’s left, and the descendants of the original Nafari on the king’s right. And within those groups, they subdivided further, for the Nafari still remembered which of them, reckoning by the father’s line, were Issibi, and which Oykibi, and which Yasoi, and which Zdorabi. And in both groups, sky people and middle people gathered separately in their clans; and at the back, the few diggers who were free citizens.
When the reading of the histories was finished, Motiak arose and said, “No one can doubt that the hand of the Keeper has been manifest in the things we have seen and heard. For the last few days I have spent every waking hour in the company of Akmaro and Chebeya, two great teachers that the Keeper has sent to us to help us learn how to be worthy guardians of the land the Keeper has given us. Now he will speak to you, with greater authority than any king.”
The people whispered to each other because the king had said such an astonishing thing. Then they listened as Akmaro spoke, moving from group to group among them; and other men and women from the Akmari went from group to group, each one teaching a part of the message that the Keeper had sent through Binaro so many years before, the message Binaro had died for. Not all believed in everything they were told, and some of the ideas were shocking, for Akmaro spoke of diggers and angels and humans being brothers and sisters. But no one dared speak in opposition to him, for he had the friendship of the king-and many of the people, perhaps most of them, especially among the poor, believed in what he said with their whole hearts.
That day many went into the water, to become new under the hands of Akmaro and his followers. And as the day drew to a close, Motiak caused another proclamation to be read:
“From now on, priests will no longer be servants of the king, appointed by the king, and staying with the king to perform the great public rituals. From now on, Akmaro will be the high priest, and he will have the power to appoint lesser priests in every city and town and village that is now under my rule. These priests of the Keeper will not be paid out of the public treasury, but will instead work with their hands like any other men and women; no labor is too humble for them, and no burden too great. As for the priests who have served me so faithfully up to now, they will not be forgotten. I will release them from their duties and grant them from my private treasury enough wealth to set them up in respectable businesses; those who want to teach may become teachers; and some few will have place with me as clerks and librarians. None are to think that I make this change because there has been any dishonor among them. But never again will a king be able to use his priests as Nuab used Pabulog and his other priests-as instruments of oppression and deception and cruelty. From now on the priests will have no political power, and in return no king or ruler will have authority to appoint or discharge a priest.
“Furthermore,” said the proclamation, “when the people gather you will no longer divide yourselves into Nafari and Darakembi, or into different tribes or clans, nor shall there be separation between people of earth, of sky, and of the middle. When you obey me as your king, you are all Nafari, you are all Darakembi. And when you gather with the priest to learn the teachings of the Keeper of Earth, then you are the Kept, and this is a matter between you and the Keeper of Earth-no mortal power, of king or governor, of soldier or teacher, may interfere in that. No person of any race may be kept beyond ten years in bondage, and all who have already served that time are now employees who must be paid a fair wage and may not be discharged, though they may freely leave. All children born in my lands are free from the moment of conception, even if the mother is a bondservant. It is a new order in my lands, and it is my plea that my people will obey.”
The last sentence was the standard formulation-all the king’s edicts were listed as pleas rather than commands, for that was the way Nafai had established things back when Heroes ruled. This time, though, there were many who heard his words with quiet rage. How dare he say that there should be no difference between me and a digger, between me and a woman, between me and an angel, between me and a human, between me and a man, between me and the poor, between me and the ignorant, between me and my enemies. Whatever their treasured prejudice might be, they gave an outward show of accepting Akmaro’s teachings and Motiak’s edict, but in their hearts, in their homes, and, bit by bit over the coming years, in quiet conversations with friends and neighbors, they rejected the madness that Akmaro and Motiak had brought upon them.
But at the time it seemed to most to be the dawning of a golden age, those glorious days when Akmaro was establishing Houses of the Kept, to be tended by priests in every city, town, and village; when Motiak celebrated the new equality of men and women, diggers, angels, and humans, and the promise of freedom for all slaves. It was a mark of their naivete, to think that such a revolution could be accomplished so easily. But in their ignorance, they were happy, and it was recorded in the Annals of the Kings of the Nafari as the most harmonious time in all of human history on Earth. The exceptions were not deemed worthy of mention in the book.
Twice each year, Akmaro went to visit each of the seven Houses of the Keeper. When he came, all the priests and teachers in that region of the empire of Darakemba would come to the House and there he would teach them, listen to their problems, and help them make their decisions. He was very careful not to allow the priests to treat him as priests of another kind had once treated kings. There was no bowing, no special notice; they touched each other’s forearms or wings in equal greeting. And when they sat, it was in a circle, and Akmaro would call upon any of them at random to lead the meeting and call on others to speak.
He came, as always, to the House of the Keeper in Bodika, the most recent addition to the empire of Darakemba. The land was at peace, having no further will to resist the rule of Motiak. But the teaching of Akmaro-that was another matter. “You must make it plain to them that it isn’t my teaching,” Akmaro said. “I learned all that I know from Binaro, or from dreams the Keeper sent-to me sometimes, but more often to others.”
“That’s the problem, Father Akmaro,” said Didul. The former sons of Pabulog had all become priests or teachers, devoting their lives to serving the Keeper that had freed them from the lies and hatred of their father. “Or part of the problem. We have quite a few people who claim to have true dreams telling them that in Bodika, at least, the Keeper doesn’t want any mixing of earth people, sky people, and middle people.”
“Those are false dreams,” said Akmaro.
“They say that yours are the false ones,” said Didul. “So what it comes down to is that we must ask them to believe, not in the Keeper, but in your words about the Keeper.”
“There are laws about fraud,” said one of the other priests. “People can’t go about attacking the teachings of the Houses of the Kept!”
“Didul won’t let us take them to the underking of Bodika,” said another.
Akmaro looked at Didul.
“I have my suspicion that the underking is in private sympathy with those who teach that the earth people are slaves by nature, even if they’ve been freed by law.”
“It’s better not to take these things to trial, anyway,” said Akmaro.
“How can the kingdom be united, if anyone can set up in business and claim to speak for the Keeper?” demanded another teacher, this one a woman of the sky people. “There has to be some limit on these things.”
“It’s not for us to tell the Keeper whom he can or cannot speak to.”
“Well when are you going to put a stop to the women speaking of the Keeper as a ‘she’?” asked an old man.
“When the Keeper lets us know whether his body has a womb or not, we will tell one group or the other to change their conception of him. Have you seen him?” asked Akmaro.
The old man protested that of course he had not.
“Then don’t be too anxious to control other people’s ideas,” said Akmaro. “It might turn out to be you who would have to learn to say ‘she.’ “
Didul laughed, as did many others-mostly the young ones, like him. But then, sobering, Didul added, “In the thirteen years since you have been high priest of Darakemba, Father Akmaro, there are still many who reject all the changes. Here in this gathering there are those women who hate having to teach congregations that include men, and men who hate teaching women. There are angels who dislike teaching humans, and humans who dislike teaching angels. Is it like this everywhere, or only here in Bodika where even the priests and teachers fail to have hearts that are at one with the Keeper?”
“Do they still teach those mixed congregations?” asked Akmaro.
“Yes,” said Didul. “But some have left their positions because they couldn’t bear it.”
“Did you appoint others to take their place?”
“Yes,” said Didul.
“Then it’s no different here from elsewhere. The mixing of men and women, of earth people, middle people, and sky people into one people, the Kept of the Keeper-that is not to be achieved in a single year or even thirteen years.”
“The quarreling among us can be bitter at times,” said Didul.
“And you always take the other side against us!” cried out one young angel.
“I take the Keeper’s side!” Didul insisted.
Akmaro rose to his feet. “What I wish you would all think about, my friends, is that there is a great deal more to what the Keeper asks of us than simply to associate with each other as equals.”
“So let’s concentrate on those things and forget the mixing up of species!” cried a woman angel.
“But if we who are priests and teachers can’t be one people,” said Akmaro, “how can we possibly expect them to believe anything we say? Look at you-how you have sorted yourselves out, dividing all the female humans from the female angels, and over there, the male humans, and here, the male angels, and where are the diggers? Are you still sitting in the back? In the farthest place?”
A digger man stood up, looking nervous. “We don’t like to push ourselves forward, Akmaro.”
“You shouldn’t have to push,” said Akmaro. “How many of you here even know this man’s name?” Didul started to answer, but Akmaro held up his hand. “Of course you know, Didul. But is there anyone else?”
“How would we?” replied an angel. “He spends all his time holding little meetings out in the caves and tunnels of the diggers.”
“Is he the only one? Don’t humans and angels also teach diggers?”
Didul spoke up. “That is hard, Father Akmaro. There’s a lot of resentment of humans and angels among the former slaves. They don’t feel safe. The Kept among the earth people wouldn’t hurt a fly, but there are others.”
“And do the diggers here feel safe among the humans and angels?” asked Akmaro.
The diggers looked back and forth with embarrassment. “Here we do, sir,” said one of them, finally.
Akmaro laughed bitterly. “No wonder those who lie about what the Keeper wants have such an easy time converting people to their way of thought. What kind of example do they see among the Kept?”
They went on to other business then, bringing many matters of judgment before Akmaro, but the undertone of unease lasted through the whole meeting, and while some made an effort to cross the boundaries between the groups as the day wore on, others withdrew even further into knots of their own kind.
Finally it was evening, and as the evening song of angels and humans filled the air of the city of Bodika, Akmaro went to the home where Didul lived.
“Still not married?” Akmaro said. “And after all my advice.”
“Twenty is still young,” said Didul.
Akmaro looked him in the eye. “There’s something you’re not saying.”
Didul smiled sadly. “There are many things that men and women do not say, because to say them would only bring unhappiness.”
Akmaro patted his shoulder. “That’s true enough. But sometimes people torment themselves needlessly, fearing that if they speak the truth other people would suffer, when in fact the truth would set them free.”
“I might tell you,” said Didul. “I dream of telling you.”
“Well, then.”
“Not true dreams, Father Akmaro. Just. . . dreams.” He looked very uncomfortable.
“What’s for supper?” said Akmaro. “I’m famished. Talking wears me out and leaves me empty.”
“I have flatcakes. Or rather we can fry some up. Let me get the fire going by the cookstone.”
“Didul, the rule is for priests to work for their living, not for them to live in dire poverty. A cookstone!”
“It’s all I need,” said Didul. “And besides, I do my labor . . . well, I don’t own land. I gave it to the diggers who had once been slaves on it. I didn’t want to live from rents.”
“Gave it to them! Couldn’t you at least have sold it to them, letting them pay a little each year and-”
“It was a gift to me,” said Didul. “I didn’t earn it, and they were the ones who had labored on it for all their lives, some of them.”
“Well, how do you earn your miserable little flatcakes?” asked Akmaro.
“I have beans, too, and good spices, and fresh vegetables and fruit all year.”
“And how does this happen? Please don’t tell me that you’re accepting gifts from the people you teach. That’s forbidden, no matter how sincerely willing the people are to give them.”
“No, no!” Didul protested. “I would never-no! I hire myself out. I do day labor for the people who would have been my tenants. And others, now. My reach is longer than any digger or angel. I’m good with a scythe, and I plow a straight furrow, and no one chops down a tree and dresses the wood more skillfully than I do. Even the ones who refuse to accept my teachings hire me when they need a tree felled.”
“A day laborer,” said Akmaro. “Day laborers are the poorest of the poor.”
“Is there anything wrong with that?” said Didul.
“Not at all,” said Akmaro. “You make me ashamed of my rents.”
“What I choose for myself isn’t a law for anyone else,” said Didul. He got out the fine-ground maizemeal and began to mix it with water and a pinch of salt.
“But when you speak, diggers and angels listen to you, I’ll wager,” said Akma. He helped Didul form the balls of dough and flatten them.
Didul shrugged. “Some do. Most do.”
“Is it as bad as the meeting today made it look?” asked Akmaro.
“Worse.”
“I don’t want to use the force of law to compel compliance,” said Akmaro.
“It wouldn’t work anyway,” said Didul. “Law can change how people behave when others are watching-that’s all. As you taught me back in the land of Chelem, the power of the whip is worthless against the stubborn heart.”
“Yes well, there you are,” said Akmaro. “But what can I tell Mo-tiak? We have to go back to the old ways, because the people won’t respect a priesthood that isn’t headed by the king?”
“No, not that,” said Didul.
“Or worse, tell him that we should give up trying to teach the Keeper’s way! But I reread those old dreams of the Heroes as Nafai and Oykib wrote them in the ancient books, and the only meaning I can take from them is that the Keeper wants us to be one people, the three species of us, the two sexes of us, the rich and poor of us. How can I back away from that?”
“You can’t,” said Didul, slapping a flattened disc of dough on the sizzling cookstone.
“But if we force everyone to live together-”
“It would be absurd. Angels can’t live in digger holes, and diggers can’t sleep upside down on perches.”
“And humans are terrified of closed-in spaces and heights, both,” said Akmaro.
“So we just keep on trying to persuade them,” said Didul.
“Then there’s no hope,” said Akmaro. He flipped over another flatcake. “I can’t even persuade you to take a wife, or to tell me why you won’t.”
“Can’t you see why I won’t?” asked Didul. “See the poverty I live in.”
“Then marry a woman who is willing to work hard and cares as little for wealth as you do.”
“How many women are like that?” asked Didul.
“I know lots of them. My wife is like that. My daughter is like that.”
Didul blushed, and suddenly Akmaro understood.
“My daughter,” he said. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it! You come four times a year to Darakemba to meet with me-and you’ve fallen in love with Luet!”
Didul shook his head, trying to deny.
“Well, you foolish boy, haven’t you spoken to her about it? She’s not a fool, she must have noticed that you’re clever and kind and, or so I’m told by the women around me, probably the most handsome young man in Darakemba.”
“How can I speak to her?” said Didul.
“I would suggest using a column of air arising from your lungs, shaped by the lips and tongue and teeth into vowels and consonants,” said Akmaro.
“When we were young, I tormented her,” said Didul. “I humiliated her and Akma in front of everyone.”
“She’s forgotten that.”
“No she hasn’t, I haven’t, either. There’s not a day goes by that I don’t remember what I was and what I did.”
“All right, I’m sure she does remember. What I meant was that she forgave you long ago.”
“Forgave me,” said Didul. “But it’s a long stride from there to the love a wife should have for a husband.” He shook his head. “Do you want bean paste? It’s quite spicy, but the earth lady who made it for me is the finest cook I’ve ever known.”
Akmaro held out his flatcake, and Didul smeared the paste on with a wooden spoon. Then Akmaro rolled it up, folded the bottom end, and began eating from the top. “As good as you promised,” he said. “Luet would like it too. Can’t make it spicy enough for her.”
Didul laughed. “Father Akmaro, don’t you know your own family? Suppose I did speak to Luet. About this, I mean. About marriage. We talk all the time when I’m there, about other things-history and science, politics and religion, all of it, except personal things. She’s- brilliant. Too fine for me, but even if I dared to speak to her, and even if she somehow loved me, and even if you gave consent, it would still be impossible.”
Akmaro raised an eyebrow. “What, is there some consanguinity I’m not aware of? I had no brother, and neither did my wife, so you can’t be some secret nephew in the first degree.”
“Akma,” said Didul. “Akma has never forgiven me. And if Luet loved me he would take it as a slap in the face. And if you then gave consent to such a marriage, there would be no forgiveness. He’d go mad. He’d-I don’t know what he’d do.”
“Maybe he’d wake up and get over this childish vindictiveness of his,” said Akmaro. “I know he’s never been the same since those days, but-”
“But nothing,” said Didul. “I did it to him. Don’t you understand? Akma’s hatred, all of it arises from the humiliation I heaped upon him that first day and so many days afterward-”
“You were a child then.”
“My father wasn’t cracking a whip over my head, Akmaro. I enjoyed it! Don’t you understand? When I see these people who tease digger children because of their poverty, because they live in holes and get dirty, because-I understand them. The tormentors. I was one. I know how it feels to have driven all compassion out of my heart and laugh at the pain of someone else.”
“You’re not the same person now.”
“I have rejected that part of myself,” said Didul. “But I’m the same person, all right.”
“When you pass through the water-”
“Yes, a new man, I become a new man. I’m a man who does not do those things, yes. But I’m still and always the man who once did them.”
“Not in my eyes, Didul. And I daresay not in Luet’s.”
“In Akma’s eyes, Father Akmaro, I am the same one who destroyed him before his sister, his mother, his father, his friends, his people. And if it ever happened that Luet and I became married-no, if he even heard that I wanted to, or that Luet was willing, or that you approved-it would set him off. I don’t know what he’d do, but he’d do it.”
“He’s not a violent man,” said Akmaro. “He’s gentle even if he does harbor ancient grudges.”
“I’m not fearing for my life,” said Didul. “I just know that someone as smart as Akma, as talented, as clever, as attractive-he’ll find a way to make us all regret that we ever dared affront him in such a way.”
“So what you’re telling me is that you refuse even to offer my daughter the possibility of marrying one of the finest young men I know in this whole empire, solely because her brother can’t grow out of his childish rage?”
“We have no way of knowing what it was that happened inside Akma, Father Akmaro. He may have been a child, but that doesn’t make the things he felt then childish.”
Akmaro took the last bite of his flatcake. The bean paste having been used up, it tasted dry and salty. “I need a drink of water,” he said.
“The Milirek has no pure source,” said Didul, “and it flows from low mountains, some of which lose their snow for much of the year.”
“I drink the water that the Keeper gives me in every land,” said Akmaro.
Didul laughed. “Then I hope you won’t go down out of the gor-naya! The slow-flowing waters of the flatlands aren’t safe. They’re muddy and foul and things live in them. I know a man who drank it once without boiling it, and he said his bowels didn’t stop running until he had lost a third of his body weight and his wife was ready to bury him, if only to save the trouble of digging yet another latrine.”
Akmaro grimaced. “I hear those stories, too. But somehow we have to learn to live in the flatlands. We’ve had peace for so long that people from all over are coming here. Former Elemaki, people from hidden mountain valleys, coming to Darakemba because under the rule of Motiak there’s peace and plenty. Well, the peace will last, I hope. But the plenty ... we have to find a way to use the flatlands.”
“The diggers can’t tunnel there, it all floods,” said Didul. “The angels can’t perch there because the trees are so thick-limbed and close together that the jaguars can reach them everywhere.”
“Then we should think of some way to build houses on rafts or something,” said Akmaro. “We need more land. And maybe if we opened up new lands, my young friend, where diggers and angels and humans had to live in the same kind of house, we might be able to create the kind of harmony that is so hard to bring to pass here in the gornaya.”
“I’ll think about it,” said Didul. “But I hope you also give this problem to cleverer men and women than me.”
“Believe me, I have and I will again,” said Akmaro. “And to cleverer ones than me, too. I learned that from Motiak. Don’t waste your time asking advice from people stupider than you.”
“That’s comforting advice,” said Didul.
“How so?”
“I can ask anybody,” he said, laughing.
“False modesty is still false, no matter how charming it might seem.”
“All right, I’m smarter than some people,” Didul admitted. “Like that one teacher who says that angels are afraid to go down into digger holes.”
“Aren’t they?”
“I know three angel physicians who do it all the time, and they’ve never been harmed.”
“Maybe,” said Akmaro, “our teachers would be less afraid if they believed their teaching was as valuable a service as the herbs of the physician.”
“Well, there we are,” said Didul. “If the believers weren’t so torn by doubt, they might do a better job of persuading the unbelievers.”
“Oh, I don’t even mind their doubt,” said Akmaro. “If they could just act as if they believed, they’d be more persuasive.”
“If I didn’t know you better,” said Didul, “I’d think you were praising hypocrisy.”
“I would rather live among people who behave correctly than among people with correct opinions,” said Akmaro. “I’ve noticed no higher incidence of hypocrisy among the former than among the latter, and at least the ones who behave well don’t take up so much of your time with arguing.”
Bego puffed along behind Akma and Mon, complaining the whole time. “I don’t see why we couldn’t have this discussion, whatever it’s about, in my study. I’m too old for this, and you may have noticed that my legs are less than half the length of yours!” To which Akma heartlessly replied, “So fly then.” From behind, Mon gave Akma a shove in the shoulder, sending him stumbling into some brush beside the path. Akma turned, ready to be angry, ready to laugh, depending on the intention he read in Mon’s eyes.
“Have respect for a friend of mine,” said Mon softly, “if not for his age and office.”
Akma smiled at once, his most winning and charming smile, and it worked as it always worked, suggesting as it did a sort of self-effacing humility, a believable protest of innocence, and a promise of friendship-whatever good thing the other person wished to read into it. Mon always wondered at that smile even as it triumphed over his own anger or envy. Where could such power over others come from?
“Ah, Bego, you knew I was teasing, I hope,” said Akma. “Forgive me, old friend?”
“I forgive you everything, every time,” said Bego wearily. “Everyone does, so why do you bother to ask anymore?”
“And do I offend so often that forgiving me should be a habit?” asked Akma, with more than a little pain in his smile this time. It made Mon want to clap an arm around his shoulders, grip him hard, assure him that no one took offense. How does he do that!
“You offend no more often than any other brilliant and undisciplined and leisured and lazy young man of twenty years,” said Bego. “Now, here, in the middle of this grassy field. If you look not to be overheard, here we are.”
“Ah,” said Mon, pointing overhead. “Have you- overlooked the prying eyes from above?”
“The fixed star,” said Bego. “Yes, yes, well, they say the Oversoul sees through roofs and leaves and solid earth, so what does it matter.”
Akma threw himself to the ground and landed immediately in the grass in an elegant sprawl that would have looked practiced in anyone less lithe and natural. “Who knows how many hundreds of digger tunnels intersect under this meadow?” he asked.
“It’s not a meadow,” said Mon. “It’s my father’s park, and no one is allowed to dig under it.”
“Oh, then we know that even the earthworms shy away from the boundaries,” said Akma.
Mon laughed in spite of himself. “So, Father’s authority isn’t universal.”
“Why are we here?” asked Bego. “Sitting isn’t my most comfortable perch.”
“But Bego,” said Akma, “humans and angels and diggers are all alike now, didn’t you know? The Keeper has spoken.”
“Well, the Keeper had better give me a new bottom if he wants me to set it on chairs or other miserably uncomfortable places,” said Bego.
“Mon and I have been thinking,” said Akma.
“The two of you together?” asked Bego. “Then perhaps you have woven a thought, if you’ve done it long and often enough.”
“We’ve been studying the histories of the Heroes. And the history that the Zenifi found thirteen years ago.”
“The Rasulum,” said Bego.
“And we wanted to try out an idea on you,” said Mon.
“Which you couldn’t do in my study? Perhaps immediately after I gave school to the youngest of the king’s boys?”
“Our question is possibly treasonable,” said Akma.
Bego immediately fell silent.
“We know that you have respect for scientific inquiry, and would never report us. But who knows what might get said by someone else, overhearing us? Perhaps exaggerating what was said?”
“What possible treason can there be in the ancient records?” asked Bego.
“If we’re right,” said Akma, “then we think you’ve been trying to hint about this for about ten years.”
“I don’t hint,” said Bego. “And if you want to know whether you’re right, it’s Mon who has the gift of certitude.”
“Well, that’s the problem,” said Mon. “If we’re right, then there’s no reason to trust in that supposed gift of mine. And if we’re wrong, well, we get the same answer-no certainty from me.”
“So we ask you,” said Akma.
“You think that your own gift from the Keeper might be imaginary?” asked Bego, incredulous.
“I think that many things can come to someone’s mind out of hysteria,” said Mon.
“Or even some keen natural insight,” said Akma. “For instance, that famous, unforgettable time when Mon helped you translate the Rasulum leaves. Who’s to say that he didn’t reach his certainties of right and wrong by unconsciously interpreting your own gestures, movements, vocal intonation, facial expressions.”
“What good would that do him?” said Bego. “I didn’t know.”
“Perhaps you knew, but didn’t know that you knew,” said Akma.
Bego riffled his wings in a shrug.
“What we’ve been doing, Akma and I, is trying to see if there’s anything in the ancient records that constitutes actual proof that there even is a Keeper of Earth.”
“No one doubts that there’s a Keeper,” said Bego. “Look at the histories,” said Akma. “All the records from the early Heroes say that all human life had been dispersed from Earth-that until the Keeper brought the Heroes here from the place called Harmony or Basilica-the record is ambiguous-”
“Basilica is the name of the fixed star,” said Bego, “and Harmony is the name of the planet orbiting that star.”
“Say the scholars,” said Akma. “Who know nothing more than we do, since they reach all their conclusions from the same records. And I say the record of the Heroes is obviously wrong. There were people here, the Rasulum.”
Bego shrugged. “That has caused a little consternation among the scholars.”
“Come on,” said Mon. “That’s the very fact you keep throwing in our faces every time we discuss history. You want us to discover something from it so don’t play innocent now.”
Akma went on. “What if humans never left this world at all? What if humans were simply forced to stay away from the gornaya during the era when it was being lifted up by volcanos and earthquakes? The Heroes talk of how there was once a time when the land masses were getting folded into each other and raised high, the tallest mountains in the world. So what if that was what gave rise to the legend of the dispersal? No humans in the gornaya, therefore no humans in the world-but actually humans to the north, in the prairie lands. Then there’s a terrible war, and as many humans as can, flee from the Rasulum. Some of them brave the old tabus and come into the gornaya. Perhaps they even come by boat, but they’re afraid the gods they worship-the Oversoul and the Keeper of Earth-will be angry at them for doing it, so they talk of having come from the stars instead of from Opustoshen.”
“Then why is the language of the leaves so different from our language?” asked Bego.
“Because it hasn’t been a mere four hundred or five hundred years since the time of the Heroes. In fact they split off from the Rasulum a thousand years ago, perhaps more. And the languages grew more and more different, until nothing was alike.”
“And what does that have to do with angels and diggers?” asked Bego.
“Nothing at all!” cried Mon. “Don’t you see? The humans came and dominated everybody, and forced their gods on everybody. But didn’t the diggers worship gods that the angels made for them? And didn’t the angels have their own gods to worship? None of this Keeper nonsense. The angels and diggers evolved separately here in the gornaya while the humans stayed away in the land northward.”
“What about the stories of Shedemei discovering some strange organ in all the sky people and all the earth people that forced us to remain together?” asked Bego.
“The story says that she caused you all to get sick and it made those organs disappear from your children,” said Akma. “So now, conveniently enough, there’s not a lick of evidence left that those organs ever existed.”
“All the stories use for evidence things that can’t be checked now,” said Mon. “That’s a standard rhetorical trick-one that any fool can expose in a public debate or trial. The new star in the sky is Basilica- but how do we know that star wasn’t there all along?”
“The records are ambiguous about that,” said Bego. “The only evidence we do have,” said Akma, “is a flat contradiction of the records of the Heroes. They said there were no other humans on Earth when they arrived. But we have the bones of Opustoshen and the leaves of the Rasulum to prove otherwise. Don’t you see? The only evidence denies everything.”
Bego looked at them placidly. “Well, this certainly is treasonous,” he finally said.
“But it doesn’t have to be,” said Akma. “That’s what I’ve been explaining to Mon. His father’s authority comes from being a direct descendant of the first Nafai. That part of the record isn’t being questioned. The kingdom is not challenged.”
“No,” said Bego. “Only your father is challenged.” Akma smiled. “If my father is teaching people to behave in uncomfortable ways, solely because the Keeper says they must, and then it turns out there is no Keeper, then whose will is it that my father is trying to foist onto the people?”
“I think your father is a sincere man,” said Bego. “Sincere but wrong,” said Akma. “And the people hate what he’s teaching.”
“The former slaves love it,” said Bego.
“The people,” said Akma.
“I gather, then, that you don’t consider diggers to be people,” said Bego.
“I consider them to be the natural enemies of humans and angels.
And I also think that there’s no reason why humans should rule over angels.”
“Now we’re definitely back to treason,” said Bego.
“Why not an alliance?” said Mon. “A king of the humans and a king of the angels, both ruling over peoples spread through the same territory?”
“Not possible,” said Bego. “One king for one territory. Otherwise there would be war and hatred between humans and angels. The Ele-maki would seize the opportunity and destroy us all.”
“But we shouldn’t be required to live together, anyway,” said Akma.
Bego looked at Mon. “Is that what you want?” he asked. “You, who as a child dreamed of being-”
“My childish dreams are done with!” Mon cried. “In fact if I hadn’t been living among angels I wouldn’t have had those wishes, would I!”
“I thought they were rather sweet. And perhaps a bit flattering,” said Bego. “Considering how many angels grow up wishing they were human.”
“None!” cried Mon. “Not one!”
“Many.”
“They’re all mad, then,” Mon replied.
“Quite likely,” said Bego. “So let’s see if I understand you. There is no Keeper and there never was. Humans never left Earth, just the gornaya. Diggers and angels never needed each other and there was no tiny organ that Shedemei removed from our bodies with a disease. And therefore there is no reason to change our whole way of life, all our customs, just because Akmaro tells us that it’s the will of the Keeper that the three species become one people, the Keeper’s Children, the People of Earth.”
“Exactly,” said Akma.
“So what?” asked Bego.
Akma and Mon looked at each other. “What do you mean, so what?” asked Mon.
“So why are you telling me?” asked Bego.
“Because maybe you can talk to Father about this,” said Mon. “Get him to stop pushing these laws.”
“Take my father away from his position of authority,” said Akma.
Bego blinked once at Akma’s words. “If I said these things to your father, my dear friends, I would simply be removed immediately from any position of responsibility. That’s the only change that would be made.”
“Does my father completely control the king, then?” asked Akma.
“Careful,” said Mon. “Nobody controls my father.”
“You know what I mean,” Akma said impatiently.
“And I know Motiak,” said Bego. “He’s not going to change his mind, because as far as he’s concerned, you have no evidence at all. For him, the very fact that true dreams led the soldiers of Ilihiak to find the Rasulum leaves is proof that the Keeper wanted them found. Therefore it is the Keeper who corrects the mistakes of the Heroes- more proof that the Keeper lived then, and the Keeper lives now. You aren’t going to dissuade someone who wants so desperately to believe in the Keeper.”
Angrily, Akma pound his fist down into the sod. “My father must be stopped from spreading his lies!”
“His mistakes,” said Bego. “Remember? You would never be so disloyal a son as to accuse your father of lying. Who would believe you then?”
“Just because he believes them doesn’t mean they’re not lies,” said Akma.
“Ah, but they’re not his lies, are they?” said Bego. “So you must call them mistakes, when you say they are your father’s.”
Mon chuckled. “Do you hear him, Akma? He’s with us. This is what he wanted us to realize all along.”
“Why do you think so?” asked Bego.
“Because you’re advising us on strategy,” said Mon.
Akma sat up, grinning. “Yes, you are, aren’t you, Bego!”
Bego shrugged again. “You can’t possibly have any strategy right now. Akmaro is too closely linked to the king’s policy, and vice versa. But perhaps there’ll come a time when the Houses of the Kept are much more clearly separated from the house of the king.”
“What do you mean?” asked Akma.
“I mean only this. There are those who want to tear your father from his throne, they’re so angry about these policies.”
“That’s not what we want!” cried Mon.
“Of course not. No one in their right mind wants that. The only reason we don’t have invasions from the Elemaki every year is because the entire empire of Darakemba is united, with armies and spies constantly patrolling and protecting our borders. It’s only a tiny minority of bigots and madmen who want to throw down the throne. However, that tiny treasonous minority will gain more and more support, the farther your father pushes these reforms of Akmaro’s. It will mean civil war, sooner or later, and no matter who wins, we’ll be weakened. There are people who don’t want that. Who want us to go back to the way we were before.”
“The old priests, you mean,” said Mon scornfully.
“Some of them, yes,” said Bego.
“And you,” said Akma. “You want things to go back the way they were.”
“I don’t have opinions on public policy,” said Bego. “I’m a scholar, and I’m reporting to you in a scholarly way the current condition of the kingdom. There are those who want to fend off civil war, protect the throne, and stop Akmaro from pushing these insane, offensive, impossible laws breaking down all distinctions between men and women, humans and diggers and angels. All this talk of forgiveness and understanding.”
Akma interrupted, full of bitterness. “It’s only a mask for those who want to turn this into a land where diggers strut around with weapons in their hands, tormenting their betters and-”
“You almost make me fear that you are one of those who wants to destroy this kingdom,” said Bego. “If that is the case, Akma, then you’ll be of no use to those who are trying to preserve the throne.”
Akma fell silent, pulling at the grass. A clump came free, spraying his face with dirt. Angrily he brushed it away.
“But what if those who are trying to preserve the throne could assure the people, Just wait. The children of Motiak don’t believe in this nonsense of all the species being equal children of the Keeper. The children of Akma have no intention of pursuing their father’s mad policies. Be patient. When the time comes, things will go back to the old way.”
“I’m not the heir,” said Mon.
“Then perhaps you should work to persuade Aronha,” said Bego.
“Even if I did, Father would only pass the kingdom on to Ominer, skipping us both.”
“Then perhaps you should also persuade Ominer and even Khimin.” At Mon’s sound of disgust Bego laughed. “He’s bright enough. He may be his mother’s son, but he’s your father’s son, too. What can your father do if all his children reject this policy?”
“My father wouldn’t care,” said Akma. “He’d just pick one of his favorites to be high priest after him. I don’t imagine he even considers me for the position.”
“Dee-dool!” cried Mon derisively.
Akma’s face went hot with anger at the sound of Didul’s name.
“It doesn’t matter who your father’s successor would really be,” said Bego. “Don’t you see that if his own son publicly preaches against his policies, he would be hopelessly undermined? Even among his own priests and teachers there’s dissension, a lack of confidence. Some of them will listen to you. Some of them won’t. But the Kept will be weakened.”
“Ho, Akma, I can imagine you preaching,” said Mon scornfully.
“I think I’d be good at it,” said Akma. “If it weren’t so likely that I’d be arrested for treason.”
Bego nodded. “That is the problem, isn’t it?” he said. “That’s why you need to bide your time. Work with your brothers, Mon. Help him, Akma. Don’t push them too hard, just suggest things, raise questions. Eventually you’ll win them over.”
“The way you did with us?” asked Akma.
Bego shrugged again. “I never suggested treason to you. I don’t suggest it now. I want you to discover truth for yourself. I don’t ram it down your throats like some do.”
“But what guarantee do we have that anything will change?”
“I think that by getting rid of priests appointed by the king, Akmaro and Motiak started down a road from which there’s no retreat,” said Bego. “Eventually it will lead them to a point where religion is completely separate from government. And when that day comes, my young friends, the law will no longer stand between you and any preaching that you want to do.”
Mon hooted. “If I still believed in my own gift, I’d say that it was certain that Bego is right! Someday soon it will happen. It has to.”
“And now that you have planned how to save the kingdom from Akmaro’s excessively inclusive beliefs, may I go inside and find a perch where I can dangle myself to stretch out my aching muscles?”
“We can carry you in, if you want,” offered Mon mischievously. “Save me even more trouble by cutting off my head and carrying it inside. The rest of my body isn’t much use to me these days anyway.”
They laughed and got up from the grass. They walked more slowly returning to the king’s house, but there was a dance, a spring in the way the boys walked-no, bounced-along the path through the king’s park. And when they passed Khimin, who was trying to memorize a long poem and having a miserable time of it, they shocked him utterly by actually inviting him to walk along with them. “Why!” Khimin demanded suspiciously.
“Because even though your mother is a certified idiot,” said Mon, “you’re still my brother and I’ve treated you shamefully for too many years. Give me a chance to make it up to you.”
As Khimin slowly and guardedly made his way toward them, Akma whispered to Mon, “You’re committed now, you know.”
“Who knows?” asked Mon. “He may be decent company after all. Edhadeya always says he’s all right, if we only give him a chance.”
“Then Edhadeya will be very happy,” said Akma. Mon winked at him. “If you like, I’ll tell her that including Dudagu Dermo’s spawn was your idea.”
Akma rolled his eyes. “I’m not casting covetous eyes on your sister, Mon. She’s three years older than me.”
“My gift may not come from the Keeper,” said Mon, “but I still know a lie when I hear one.”
With that, Khimin was near enough to overhear them, and the conversation changed to include him. By the time they reached the king’s house, Akma and Mon had both used so much charm on the poor eighteen-year-old that he was utterly besotted with them and would have believed them if they told him his own feet were tree stumps and his nose a turnip.
Bego left them as soon as they were inside, and on his way through the corridors he did use his wings a bit, skittering along the floor and singing snatches of happy songs to himself. Clever boys, he said to himself. They’ll do it, if we give them half a chance. They will do it.
Luet loved it when Mother went to call on Dudagu in the king’s house, because after a few moments of being polite to the queen, who was not aging well and spent her days complaining of ill health, she was always excused and allowed to go off in search of Edhadeya. She had begun the custom when she was only five, and Edhadeya was a lofty ten-year-old; she marveled now, thinking back, that the king’s daughter had been so kind to a child half her age who had so recently been a slave to diggers. Or perhaps that was the reason-Edhadeya had taken pity on her, having heard the story of her suffering. Well, however it began, the friendship was in full bloom now, with Edhadeya twenty-three years old and Luet eighteen and a woman.
She found her friend working with the musicians, teaching them some new composition. The drummers seemed not to be able to get the rhythm right. “It isn’t hard,” Edhadeya was saying. “It’s only hard when you put it together. But if you can hear how it goes with the melody. . . .” Whereupon Edhadeya began to sing, a high sweet voice, and now the one drummer, now the other, began to feel how the beat she had been teaching fit with the tune she sang, and without even thinking what she was doing, Luet began to spin and raise her arms and hop in the steps of an impromptu dance.
“You shame my poor tune!” cried Edhadeya.
“Don’t stop, it was beautiful!”
But Edhadeya stopped at once, leaving the musicians to work on the song while she walked with Luet out into the vegetable garden. “Worms everywhere. In the old days we used to have slaves whose whole job was picking them off the leaves. Now we can’t pay anyone enough to do it, so all our greens have holes in them and every now and then a salad moves of its own accord. We all pretend it’s a miracle and go on eating.”
“I have to tell you that Akma is in one of his vile moods lately,” said Luet.
“I don’t care,” said Edhadeya. “He’s too young for me. He’s always been too young for me. It was a form of madness that I ever thought I was in love with him.”
Luet looked up at the sky. “What? All those clouds? I thought you loved my brother whenever it rained.”
“At the moment it’s not raining,” said Edhadeya. “And is today one of the days you’re in love with Mon?”
“Nobody,” said Luet. “I don’t think I’d make a good wife.”
“Why not?” asked Edhadeya.
“I don’t want to stay in a house and order work all day. I want to go out like Father does and teach and talk and-”
“He works.”
“In the fields, I know! But I’d do that! Just don’t make me stay indoors. Maybe it was my childhood labor in the fields. Maybe in my heart I’m always afraid that if I’m not working, some digger twice my height will-”
“Oh, Luet, I get nightmares whenever you talk like that.”
“Found one,” said Luet, holding up a worm.
“How attractive,” said Edhadeya.
Luet crushed the worm between her fingers, balled up the remnants of its body, and dropped it into the soil. “One more salad that will not move,” she said.
“Luet,” said Edhadeya, and in the moment the whole tone of the conversation changed. No longer were they playful girls. Now they were women, and the business was serious. “What has your brother come up with lately? What’s going on between him and my brothers?”
“He’s always over here with Mon,” said Luet. “I think they’re studying something with Bego. Or something.”
“So he doesn’t talk to you?” said Edhadeya. “He talks to them.”
“Them?”
“Not just Mon now. He talks to Aronha and Ominer and Khimin.”
“Well, it’s nice that he’s including Khimin. I don’t really think the boy is as awful as-”
“Oh, he’s awful, all right. But potentially salvageable, and if I thought it was salvage that Akma and Mon had in mind, I’d be glad,” said Edhadeya. “But it’s not.”
“Not?”
“Yesterday someone mentioned true dreams and looked at me. It was nothing, just a chance comment. I can’t even remember-one of the councilors, coming to meet with Father, and he looked at me. But I happened to turn away just at that moment and saw Ominer rolling his eyes in ridicule. So I followed him and once we were alone in the courtyard I threw him up against the wall and demanded to know why he was making fun of me.”
“You’re always so gentle,” murmured Luet.
“Ominer doesn’t hear you unless he’s in physical pain,” said Edhadeya. “And I’m still stronger than he is.” ffi
“Well, what did he say?”
“He denied he was making fun of me. So I said, Whom were you making fun of? And he said, Him.”
“Who?” asked Luet.
“You know, the councilor who looked at me. And I said, you can’t blame people for thinking about my dream of the Zenifi when they see me. Not everybody has true dreams. And then he said-listen, Luet-he said, Nobody does.”
“Nobody?” Luet laughed, then realized that Edhadeya didn’t think it was funny. “Dedaya, I’ve had true dreams, you’ve had true dreams. Mother’s a raveler. Mon has his truthsense. Father dreams true, and- this is absurd.”
“I know that. So I asked him why he said it, and he wouldn’t tell. I pinched him, I tickled him-Luet, Ominer can’t keep a secret from me. I’ve always been able to torture it out of him in five minutes. But this time he pretended he didn’t know what I was talking about.”
“And you think it has something to do with Akma and Mon?”
“I know it does. Luet, the only way Ominer could possibly keep a secret from me is if he was more frightened of someone else. And the only two people he fears more than me in the whole world are-”
“Your father?”
“Don’t be silly, Father’s as sweet as they come when he notices Ominer at all-which isn’t often, he blends in with the walls. No, it’s Mon and Aronha. I think it’s both of them. I watched this morning, and all four of my brothers ended up with your brother and whatever they’re talking about or planning or doing-”
“It has to do with the idea that there are no true dreams.” Edhadeya nodded. “I can’t go to Father with this, they’d just deny it.”
“Lie to your father?”
“Something’s different. It made me feel dark and unpleasant and I think they’re plotting something.”
“Don’t say that,” said Luet. “It’s our families we’re talking about.”
“They’re not just boys anymore. Because we’re still studying, we sometimes forget that we’re not really in school, none of us but Khimin, when you come down to it. We’re men and women. If Akma weren’t your father’s son, he’d be earning his own living. Aronha plays at soldier, but he has too much leisure, and so do my other brothers- they make priests work, but not the sons of the king.”
Luet nodded. “Father tried to make Akma start earning his way when he was only fifteen. The age when laborers’ children-”
“I know the age,” said Edhadeya.
“Akma just said, ‘What, are you going to stand over me with a whip if I don’t?’ It was really vicious.”
“Your father wasn’t his taskmaster in those terrible days,” said Edhadeya.
“But Father forgave the taskmasters. The Pabulogi. Akma hasn’t, and he is still angry.”
“Thirteen years!” cried Edhadeya.
“Akma feeds on it the way an unborn chick feeds on the yolk of its egg. Even when he’s thinking about something else, even when he doesn’t realize it, he’s seething inside. He was my teacher for a while. We became very close. I loved him for a while more than I loved anybody. But if I came too close, if I touched his affection in just the wrong way, he lashed out. Sometimes it shocked me the way Elemak and Mebbekew must have felt when Nafai knocked them down with lightning from his finger.”
“Melancholy. I thought he was just a moody sort of person,” said Edhadeya.
“Oh, I’m sure that’s it,” said Luet, “it’s just that when he gets into that mood, it’s my father that he rages at.”
“And the Pabulogi.”
“They don’t come around often. When the priests come in for their meetings with Father, Akma makes sure he’s somewhere else. I don’t think he’s seen any of them for years.”
“But you’ve seen them.”
Luet smiled wanly. “As little as possible.”
“Even from her deathbed, as she calls it, Mother gets all the gossip, and she says that Didul looks at you like . . . like. ...”
“Like my worst nightmare.”
“You can’t mean that,” said Edhadeya.
“Not him personally. But what if he did decide he loved me? What if I loved him? It would be quicker and kinder if I just slit Akma’s throat in his sleep.”
“You mean this childish melancholy of Akma’s would keep you from the man you love?”
“I don’t love Didul. It was just a hypothetical situation.”
“Lutya, my friend, isn’t life complicated here in the king’s house?”
“It’s probably just as complicated for the poorest peasants. Down in their holes in the ground the most powerless ex-slaves probably have exactly the same problems. Grudges, loves, anger, fear, hate-”
“But when they quarrel in their tunnels, the whole kingdom doesn’t quake,” said Edhadeya.
“Well, that’s your family. Not mine.”
Edhadeya picked another worm off another leaf. “There are people eating holes in the kingdom, Lutya. What if our brothers turn out to be among the worms?”
“That’s what you’re afraid of, isn’t it? Deny the Keeper. Then we don’t have to associate with diggers and angels and-”
“Mon loves the angels. It would kill him not to be with them.”
“But does he love the sky people more than Akma hates the earth people?”
“When it comes down to it, Mon won’t give up his love for the angels.”
“Still. It would be a terrible thing if they started-”
“Don’t even think about it,” said Edhadeya. “Our brothers would not commit treason.”
“Then you’re not afraid,” said Luet.
Edhadeya sat on a bench and sighed. “I am afraid.”
A new voice came from behind them. “Of what?”
They turned. It was Chebeya, Luet’s mother. “Done already?” Luet asked.
“Poor Dudagu is exhausted,” said Chebeya.
Edhadeya snorted.
“Don’t make that sound in the woods,” said Chebeya, “or a jaguar will find you.”
“I don’t see why you think it’s so unnatural for me to despise my stepmother,” said Edhadeya.
“Your father loves her,” said Chebeya.
“A sign of his infinite capacity for love,” said Edhadeya.
“What were you talking about when I came out here?” asked Chebeya. “And don’t deny it was important, I could see how you were bound together.”
Luet and Edhadeya looked at each other.
“Trying to decide how much to tell me?” asked Chebeya. “Let me make it easy for you. Start with everything.”
So they told her.
“Let me watch them a little,” said Chebeya, when they were done. “If I see them together, I can learn a lot.”
“How can Mon not believe in true dreams?” asked Edhadeya. “He knows when things are true-he knew my dream about your family was a true one.”
“Don’t underestimate my son’s powers of persuasion,” said Chebeya.
“Mon isn’t any man’s puppet,” said Edhadeya. “I know him.”
“No, not a puppet,” said Chebeya. “But I know Akma’s gift.”
“He has one?” asked Luet.
“The little sister is the last to see,” said Edhadeya.
“He has the same gift as me,” said Chebeya.
“He’s never said so!” cried Luet.
“No, because he doesn’t realize it. It’s different with men, I think. Men don’t form communities as easily as women do. Human men, I’m speaking of-angels aren’t like this. Or maybe they are, it’s not as if I’ve had much experience. I just know that when a man has the raveling gift, he doesn’t see the connections between people the same way. What he does is he starts unconsciously finding ways to gather up all those scattered threads in his own hands.”
“So he can’t see the web of people,” said Luet. “He just becomes the spider?”
Chebeya shuddered. “I haven’t explained to him what it is he does. I’m afraid that if he ever becomes conscious of it, it’ll be much worse. He’ll become more powerful and. . . .”
“Dangerous,” said Edhadeya.
Chebeya turned away from her. “He gathers people up and they want to please him.”
“Enough that Mon would give up his love for the sky people?” asked Edhadeya.
“I’ll have to see them together, with that in mind. But if Akma really cared about something and needed Mon’s help, then I think Mon would help him.”
“But that’s horrible,” said Edhadeya. “Does that mean that the times I thought I loved him-”
“I don’t know,” said Chebeya. “Or I mean-I do know-as much as he is capable of love, he has loved you, from time to time.”
“Not now.”
“Not lately.”
Tears rolled out of Edhadeya’s eyes. “This is so stupid,” said Edhadeya. “I’m not even pining for him, I go whole days without thinking of him-but it’s just this gift of his, isn’t it?”
Chebeya shook her head. “When he ravels people up, it only lasts for a little while. A day or two. Unless he stays with you, it fades. You haven’t seen him in a week.”
“I see him every day,” said Edhadeya.
“You haven’t been close to him, though,” said Luet helpfully.
“He has to be talking to you, looking at you, interacting with you,” said Chebeya. “You can trust your feelings with him. They’re real enough.”
“More’s the pity,” murmured Edhadeya.
“Mother,” said Luet, “I think something very dangerous is happening. I think Akma and the sons of Motiak are plotting something.”
“As I said, I’ll look and see if it seems that way.”
“And if it does?”
“I’ll talk to your father about it,” said Chebeya. “And perhaps then we’ll talk to the king. And he may want to talk to you.”
“And when everyone has talked to everybody,” said Edhadeya, “there still won’t be a thing we can do.”
Chebeya smiled. “Ever hopeful, aren’t you? Dedaya, have some trust. Your father and my husband and I may be old, but we still have some power within our reach. We can change things.”
“I notice you didn’t include my stepmother in that group,” said Edhadeya nastily.
Chebeya smiled with benign innocence. “Poor Dudagu. She’s too frail to be mentioned in the same breath with power.”
Edhadeya laughed.
“Come home with me now, Luet. There’s work to do.”
Edhadeya hugged them both and watched them leave the courtyard. Then she lay back on the bench and looked up at the sky. She thought, when the angle of the sun was right, that she could see the star Basilica even in bright sunlight. Today, though, the clouds were blocking everything. It was going to rain.
“One-Who-Was-Never-Buried,” murmured Edhadeya. “Are you going to do anything about this?”
Shedemei loaded her supplies into the ship’s launch as the Oversoul murmured one more time inside her mind: <Are you sure this is wise?>
“Do you think you can’t protect me?” asked Shedemei.
<I can keep you from being killed.>
“That’s all I ask.”
<I still don’t see what you can discover that I can’t find out faster and more accurately.>
“I want to know these people, that’s all,” said Shedemei. “I want to know them for myself.”
<You can’t possibly know them as well from just conversing with them as I know them from looking inside their thoughts.>
“Do I have to say it? Can’t you look inside my mind and see the truth?”
<The question really is: Can you?>
“I can. I’m going down there because I’m lonely. There, is that what you wanted to hear?”
<Yes.>
“Well, now you’ve heard it. I want to hear another organic voice. No insult to you, but I actually would like to feel like some other people know me.”
<I’m not offended. I’ve been hoping you’d do something like this. I just wish you had chosen a more benign time. There is little you can do by way of intervention at this time.>
“I know,” said Shedemei. “And I don’t claim to have any great and noble purpose. I’m just ready to come out of this metal shell and bump up against some people again.” Then she thought of something. “How old am I? People will ask.”
<You mean physically? The cloak keeps you very healthy. You could pass for forty. You haven’t reached menopause. You never will, actually, until you tell me to let you do it.>
“Are you suggesting that I should have another child?”
<I’m just telling you to be careful how you go about curing your loneliness. >
Shedemei curled her lip in disgust. “This is a society with a strong tabu against sex outside of marriage. I’m not going down there to ruin some poor lonely man’s life.”
<Just a thought.>
“Are you sure all these warnings aren’t because you’re just the tiniest bit jealous?”
<Not programmed into me.>
“I can walk on the face of this planet, and other living creatures will know me as one of them. Have you ever wished. . . .”
<I don’t wish.>
“That’s a shame, too.”
<It’s sweet of you to anthropomorphize me so compassionately. But if I really had these feelings you project onto me, wouldn’t the last few things you’ve said be, in a technical sense, gloating?>
“That is programmed into me” said Shedemei.
The hatches were sealed. The launch was flipped away from the starship Basilica and hurtled down into the atmosphere.