There were many things for a young man to do, many duties that the community required of him, even if he was already married, and to a remarkable woman like Iguo. Because of pTo’s extraordinary advancement, people looked to him for achievement, looked for him to be a model of young manhood.
Well, perhaps not always. Many of diem looked to pTo for disappointment at best, scandal at worst. He was too young. Iguo had only married a mere boy like that because her great grandmother Upua had done the same with Kiti. It had become something of a family tradition for the women of that line, to marry a man who was too young-and pTo was no Kiti, as many were quick to point out.
“You’re no Kiti, you know,” said pTo’s own otherself, Poto.
“As well for you I’m not,” said pTo. “His otherself was dead the year he made his sculpture and was chosen by Upua.”
“You can’t go doing crazy things. They’re not going to forgive you anything. If you’re brilliant they’ll say you’re arrogant. If you falter, they’ll say you overreached. If you’re friendly they’ll say you’re condescending. If you’re aloof they’ll say you’re arrogant.”
“So I might as well do what I want.”
“Just remember that it’s my name you’re dragging through the mud. If you’re a madman, what am I?”
“A helpless victim of my lunacy,” said pTo. “I want to go to the tower.”
Resting on the stout limb of a tree, they were watching over a flock of fat turkeys. The turkeys themselves were docile enough, too stupid to know the fate that the people had in store for them. The danger was from devils, who liked nothing better than to steal from the herds of the people. Lazy creatures, devils never did their own work except digging their nasty little holes in the ground and carving out the hearts of trees. During the birthing season, they came in force, stealing sometimes as many as a third of each year’s newborns- that was why so many people had lost their otherself. During the rest of the year, though, it was the flocks and herds they were after.
“We’re on watch,” said Poto.
“We’re watching the wrong thing,” pTo insisted. “The Old Ones at the tower are the most important creatures in the world.”
“Boboi says they’re our enemies.”
“Why was my wife’s ancestor shown the face of an Old One, then, if they aren’t to be our friends?”
“To warn us,” said Poto.
“The Old Ones know secrets, and if we don’t make friends with them, they’ll give those secrets to the devils. Then we really will have them as enemies.”
“It’s forbidden,” said Poto, “and we have responsibilities here, and no matter how young you might have been when you got married, you are not Kiti.” pTo knew that his otherself was right. He usually was.
But pTo couldn’t bear to concede the point, because he knew that if he didn’t learn about the Old Ones, no one else would. No one else dared. “I’m not Kiti,” said pTo, “but I also am the only man who doesn’t fear that he’ll be rejected by all the women because of flouting Boboi’s ban on visiting the Old Ones.”
“You’re not the only married man.”
“You know what I mean. The older men don’t want to go. They get a little slow, a little fat. It’s too dangerous for them to go down there into the heart of devil country.”
One of the turkeys decided, as turkeys will, that it was urgently required to be somewhere out in the brush, and it suddenly started gobbling and running. Without a word, Poto swooped down from the limb and flew in front of the bird, shouting. The bird stopped, gazing stupidly at the man beating his wings in the air in front of him. Poto dropped to the ground, then jumped into the air again and, on the leap, kicked the turkey in the face. It screeched, turned around, and trotted back to the herd.
When Poto rejoined him on the limb, pTo couldn’t resist. “What you just did to that turkey is what Boboi is doing to all the men.”
Poto sighed. “Give me a little peace, pTo.”
“What I’m saying, Poto, is that I’m going. You can tend the herd alone.”
“We herd in twos because a man is needed to watch the turkeys, and another to watch the man so he isn’t taken by surprise.”
“Then come with me,” said pTo. “I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m afraid to go alone.”
“I’m afraid to go at all, and you should be, too.”
“Then goodbye, my otherself, my bettermind. Perhaps my Iguo will marry you after I’m dead.” In the old days, they would both be married to her already. Sometimes pTo wished it had not changed.
“Yes, everything’s a poem to you,” said Poto scornfully, but pTo was not deaf to the emotion behind his hard words.
“My death, when it comes, will be one that the poets sing of.”
“Better to have a life that your children remember with joy than a death that the poets remember with song.”
“Hard to believe you’re not an old man, when you quote nonsense like that.”
“Go if you must.” pTo immediately leapt from the branch. Moments after his glide began, he rose up, circling higher than the treetops. He shouted down at Poto. “Watch your back, Obedient One!”
“No!” shouted Poto, truly angry. “I won’t do your work for you!”
His words stung, but pTo flew on, down the valley. He knew that others would see him, and he knew that while Poto was high enough up the valley to be in little danger, others would say that he was so unnatural as not to love his otherself. Let them say what they would. Boboi was wrong. There was great danger in ignoring the Old Ones. pTo would study them, learn about them, perhaps enter into conversation with them. Learn their language. Become their friend. Bring back their ancient secrets. Better to bring knowledge back to the people than mere trinkets. Their trove of Old One artifacts was not large, but it had taken many generations to collect it. All of it was worthless, because none of it meant anything. It was knowledge that was needed, secrets that must be told. Not to the devils, either. To us.
It wasn’t far. pTo wasn’t even tired when the tower came into view. He had seen it before, from afar, and marveled at it every time. Who could shape a thing as smooth and tall as that? like sunlight on the water, it was so bright, and the trees looked like bushes bowing down to worship it.
Why had the Old Ones come to dwell among the devils, and not among the people? Was it possible that the Old Ones were hellfolk and not from the gods at all? Yet they had not burst upward from the ground. They came from the sky. How then could they be hellfolk?
They could be hellfolk because they rested their tower right beside a stand of thick, ancient trees. The signs of a devil city were all around. Dead trees here and there; depressions here and there from old tunnels that had given way; and nearby, the rocky hills that held miles of caves for their obscene cannibalistic worship. The Old Ones must have seen all this, must have known, and yet they built their own village where the devils could watch them without leaving their holes. Why would the Old Ones do this, if they didn’t intend to befriend the devils? They probably already had. It was already too late.
But if it is too late, then I’ll see signs of their alliance, I’ll get some idea of what the danger is, and I’ll come home and report. When the danger is clear enough, they’ll stop listening to Boboi. But then we’ll come down here for war instead of learning, and the Old Ones will probably strike us out of the sky with magic. The Old Ones live in a tower that stands on a foundation of fire. Even the greatest warrior of the people would be no more irritating to them than a gnat.
It must not be war. It must be friendship. I must find a way to make it friendship.
The devils had no doubt already noticed him. Flight was the salvation of the people, but it was also their bane, at least in the daytime. They could leap to the sky to escape an enemy; but their enemy could look to the sky to watch them approach. Much had been made of the difference: The people were open and honest, the devils stealthy and deceptive. The people lived in the realm of the sun and stars, the devils in the realm of the worms and grubs. The people were as light as air, and therefore spiritual, akin to the gods; the devils were heavy and plodding, and therefore earthy, akin to stone.
But it didn’t change the fact that if a devil once got its hands on a man, it could break any of his bones as easily as snapping a twig. There was no fighting the devils hand to hand. One thrust with a spear, that’s all a man would ever get. Then he either had to fly or die. He couldn’t even lift a very heavy burden-not even a stone to drop on a devil’s head, or at least not a stone large enough to cause harm.
Couldn’t even lift his own child when the child was at that awkward age, too large to carry in flight, too young yet to fly. So it was at that time of year that the devils came, and parents had to make the terrible choice: Which child the two of them would carry to safety. Some were able to get back in time to save the second. Some were lucky enough to have older children who had not yet mated, who could take the other twin to safety. That’s how Poto had survived, because he and pTo were thirdborn. Rare indeed was the firstborn whose otherself was still alive.
So the devils were watching him, wondering why he came. Salivating, too, no doubt, at the thought of having his meat between their teeth. Well, pTo was young and quick enough that no one was going to take him. He was still light enough to perch on far branches that the devils couldn’t climb on without shaking them. His ears were still so keen that he could hear the sound of the fingers digging into the bark of the tree. There was danger if he walked into a trap, but if he was careful he would be safe.
Then pTo had a troubling thought: Every man or woman taken by the devils must have thought exactly the same thing, right up to the moment when they realized they were wrong.
The Old Ones’ village was very small, in terms of numbers, but huge in terms of size. Their houses were monstrously large. Whole trees had been felled and split to make the walls and roofs, except for the few buildings made of strange substances that pTo had never seen before. It was hard to make sense of what the buildings were for. The large one must be a dormitory-but then, why was there only one? Did their un-mated males and females sleep in the same house? Unthinkable.
He chose his vantage point-a slender branch, sturdy enough to provide a good launch for flight, with many leaves to keep him from the Old Ones’ view. He inspected the trunk of the tree, but it was thin enough that the devils couldn’t have hollowed it yet, so he didn’t have to worry about ambush through a hidden door in the tree. For a devil to get to him it would have to climb the outside of the trunk, and pTo would hear it.
Unless he didn’t hear it, or unless they could hollow a tree that thin. pTo ignored his own fears and settled down to watch. He watched all day, and by sundown he had learned many strange new things. The most amazing thing was that all the adults seemed to be married, each couple dwelling in their own house. The largest building was used during the day by a couple of adults and all the young children; obviously the Old Ones were holding school. But indoors? Closing their children off from the world in order to teach them about it made no sense to pTo.
Another thing pTo learned was that everyone lived in the buildings made of wood; the buildings made of that strange, smooth substance were only for storage or some more arcane purpose, for these buildings were rarely visited, and then only to fetch a tool or some other item, or return it to its place.
The Old Ones kept some animals in pens, but very few, and they were strange. A pair of them looked like goats, but they were huge. A pair of them looked like cows, but they were tiny. And there were dozens of wolves-or at least they barked and whined and howled like wolves- and they ran free among the Old Ones. Friends of wotves! What kind of creatures were these Old Ones? Didn’t they fear for their babies’ safety? Or were their babies born strong? No, not at all: pTo could see that a couple of the Old Ones carried babies with them in slings, and the babies looked completely helpless.
At first pTo thought-with disappointment-that all the children were alone. It was only late in the afternoon that he realized that two of the little ones were identical, and had the same parents. They did have otherselves! And yet the two of them weren’t always together-that was why pTo hadn’t realized they were not the same child until late in the day. He thought about this: only one pair out of all the children. Had the Old Ones been such calamitously unlucky parents that all the other pairs had been broken? Or was it possible that only some of their children were born in pairs, and all the others simply came as singles? What were they, then-animals?
Time to think about that later. When he had learned their language, he could perhaps find a way to ask such indelicate questions. For now, though, he could only watch. But particularly he would watch the pair, to see how they could go through childhood so often apart from each other. Are they so much stronger than we are, pTo wondered, or do they simply lack real affection?
During the day he noticed that most of the adults spent a great deal of time in the large cleared area, where they had marked the earth in many rows, as if loosening the day to make a giant sculpture-though the soil here was loose, and would never hold together if they tried to shape it. But after watching for several hours, it dawned on pTo that the furrowed soil was quite possibly just an early stage of the four strange meadows, each with grass of a different height. For there, too, the roots of the grasses seemed to grow in rows. There were other areas, too, where plants seemed to have been intentionally placed, and from one of them a couple of Old Ones went to gather melons, which were then cut open and shared with the workers in the middle of the day.
This was the first secret pTo learned from the Old Ones, that instead of remembering from year to year where the best plants grew, and taking care to leave an offering of fruit and roots in the earth so the Mother would give back new plants the next year, the offerings could be taken away from their original rooting place and herded together like turkeys or goats, so they could be watched over and cared for all at once, by only a few men and women. Of course, there would be danger in this, too-all the devils would have to do is find an artificial meadow like this, and then lie in wait until the gatherers came. So it might be that the people couldn’t use this particular secret of the Old Ones. But maybe they could, more to the point, the devils almost certainly could. But then, the devils could easily have learned the people’s secret, too, of herding animals so they could be protected from predators and led to good eating. Instead, the devils simply learned to search for the people’s flocks and herds, and steal from them. No doubt the devils were already planning to steal fruit and seeds from the meadows of the Old Ones.
Here was the strangest thing of all. No one stood on guard. Some of the children took turns standing in two of the meadows, the one where all the grasses were coming ripe at once, and the one that was new-furrowed, where the birds seemed to be finding new-planted seeds. There the children watched for birds to land and ran to shoo them away.
Birds they watch for, but not devils.
Did this mean that the Old Ones had already befriended the devils? Or perhaps they had already conquered them and forced them into submission.
Or-was it possible?-the devils had been so-stealthy, and the Old Ones so careless, that they had not yet noticed that the devils were watching them.
Surely the Old Ones could see some fragment of what pTo could sec. During the day he had watched as more than a dozen different parties of devils arose out of the earth or emerged onto branches of trees, to watch. pTo had seen several of the devils taking note of him, too, and was sure that they were plotting some way to take him, or at least drive him off The devils were clever, but not that clever. Or were the Old Ones merely unobservant? How could they have become so powerful if they were too stupid to notice things as important as where the devils were, what they were watching, where they were laying their traps?
The sun set.
Now was the time, pTo knew, when the devils would spring whatever trap it was that they had been planning all day. Night was also when they would do their thieving and spying on the Old Ones. He could already see in the waning light that devils were gathering at meadow’s edge; yet the Old Ones gave no alarm, and seemed to set only the most inadequate watch-one male, walking around carrying a lamp in his hands (and never spilling it!). A lamp-it made no sense. Why not just shout, “I’m coming, get out of my way, hide from me so I can’t see you!” pTo heard a faint rubbing sound and felt his branch vibrate. For a moment he was tempted to wait, to tease the devil, to pretend that he didn’t know he was being stalked. But then he thought: Perhaps this is all the warning I’ll get. Perhaps the devil is closer than I think. And if I linger for even a moment longer. . . .
He lunged for the sky and as he did he heard a hiss of disappointment right behind him, so loud and close that he imagined he could feel the devil’s breath on his back. That is how people die, he thought. Waiting just a little too long to take to the sky.
He swooped, then rose up high enough to soar for a few moments. He was a little stiff from his posture of stillness during the day. It would have been better if he could have set his hands and feet and hung upside down-but then he would have been in danger of falling asleep. No, stiffness was the price of remaining in an upright posture all day, without moving. Though from what he had seen of the Old Ones, pTo wondered if he needed to be so careful. He could probably do a jig and sing a song, and the Old Ones wouldn’t see him.
He knew that the devils would be out in the Old Ones’ meadows now, but he felt he had to take a risk and gather up samples of the grasses they were growing in such perfect unison. He went to the ripest field first and saw at once that the danger there was extreme. The stalks weren’t strong enough to hold him, and yet were tall enough to interfere with flight. Worst of all, the breeze rustled them constantly so that pTo wouldn’t be able to hear any of the faint noises the devils might make moving through the grass. He dared not settle to the ground there-every devil in the grass would have seen him, though he couldn’t see any of them at all, and there was a chance he would come down within a few handspans of one of them and never know it till the powerful hands clamped around his legs or arms, or ripped into the tough, thin skin of his wings.
He dared not come to ground, and yet he did it, because he would not go home without some trophy of his expedition. The secrets he had learned were the most valuable things he could bring back, he knew, but it would go better for him in withstanding Boboi’s criticism if he also had something in his hands. So he came to ground and immediately started breaking off stalks as near the ground as he could. He didn’t bother to look around him. He wouldn’t have been able to see anything, anyway. If a devil was very close, he was doomed whether he looked or not; and if the devils were farther off, stopping and looking for them through the impenetrable grass would merely have given them time to get closer.
How many stalks? One. Two. Three. Each one took its moment to break off, to lay down next to the first; how many moments did he have? Four. Five. How many stalks did he need? Six. Seven. Were they all ripe? Or would he be bringing home only immature ones, which would embarrass him? Eight. Nine.
Enough. Done. Fly.
Gathering the stalks in one foot, he squatted, then jumped upward with all his might. His wings could barely spread in the grass, so that he had to fling them out to full length after he rose above the stalk, and then it took all his strength to dig into the air and rise. For a terrifying moment he hovered at the level of the tops of the stalks, moving forward but not rising. Under him, he could see eyes-four, six, eight-flowing in the moonlight, leaping upward toward him as he passed. If they had been taller, or if pTo had been slower, he would now be lying amid the stalks as they tore his body to pieces and carried the bits of him down into their holes to share with their filthy dirt-eating mates.
But they were not taller, and pTo was not slower, and so he rose into the air and flapped his way toward the village of the Old Ones. He had to touch one of the buildings that was not made of wood. This was safer, though. None of the devils had moved into the village, and the Old One with the lamp would probably not see him. He would be on the roof, too, with nothing to hinder him from taking flight.
The roof gave way slightly under his weight. Since he could only hold his place with the foot that wasn’t gripping the stalks of grain, he had to bend down and use his hands to feel the texture of it. Woven like a temporary nest, like a basket, only the weave was astonishingly tight and fine. Even water couldn’t pass through a weave as dose as this. And what the fibers were made of he could not begin to guess. They had shone in the sunlight. Why would the Old Ones kill trees to build their houses, when they could weave a roof as fine and perfect as this one?
One last temptation, after the smooth house: He flew to the base of the tower and touched it. Not like the woven house at all. There was no give to it; it was like stone, except not as cold to the touch. When he struck it lightly with his knuckles, he could hear a faint ring to it, like several of the artifacts of the Old Ones in the village trove. This much, then, was still true of the Old Ones: They built music into the things they made.
He was startled by a noise-like a voice, only loud and deep. He was so frightened that he took flight without thinking. Only when he was airborne could he turn and overfly the place and see who had spoken. It was a voice. One of the Old Ones. A male. How had it come upon him so quietly? The Old Ones were noisy in everything they did, like deaf people. This one shouted like a deaf person, too, his voice so loud and booming. And yet he had been able to come upon pTo so quietly that-
So quietly that he obviously must not have “come upon” pTo at all. He must have been sitting there in the shadow of the tower. Sitting there all along. How much did he notice? Did he see the stalks of grain that pTo had stolen? Would he be angry now? Would this theft make the Old Ones enemies of the people?
For a moment pTo thought: I won’t tell anyone that the Old One saw me.
But he discarded the idea at once. If we ever become friends with the Old Ones, they will remember the stalks that I stole from their meadow. I will bear the penalty for it then. But my people will already have known that my theft was noticed. They will know that I told them the truth about everything I did-even the mistake of being seen. Many will criticize me for my carelessness-but none will doubt that I am honest, or claim that I altered my story to make myself look good. Better to have the trust of the people than their respect. With trust, their respect could be earned later; without it, respect could never be deserved, and so to have it would be like poison.
Tired from the day’s stillness, dreading his homecom-ing, pTo flapped his way higher, up the canyon, toward the valley where the people lived.
Oykib watched the giant feat as it circled once, then flew away up the canyon. He knew that to others, this would mean the beginning of the fulfillment of the old dreams, the ones from the Keeper of Earth. But to Oykib, it was something else. He had heard the voice of the Keeper, speaking to this visitor-and he had understood it.
The voice of the Keeper was strange. It was quieter than the voice of the Oversoul, less clear. It spoke more in images than ideas, more in desires than in emotions. It was harder for Oykib to understand; indeed, when they first arrived on Earth it had taken him several weeks before he even realized that the voice of the Keeper was there. The conversations between humans and the Oversoul were so much louder that the voice of the Keeper was like distant thunder, or a light breeze in the leaves-more felt than heard. But once he noticed it, once he had an idea of what it was, he began to listen for it. Sitting in the shadow of the starship in the gathering dusk, he could concentrate, gradually letting the louder voice of the Oversoul fade into the background.
It was especially hard because the Keeper didn’t speak to humans very often. A dream now and then, sometimes a desire; and the dreams didn’t often come at times when Oykib could hear them easily. But the Keeper had almost constant dialogue with someone else. Many someones, who seemed to surround the village of Rodina-but how far away or near they were he couldn’t guess. The real problem was understanding what was being said. The dreams, the desires he overheard made no sense. At first he thought it was a simple matter of confusion. There were too many of them, that was all. But then, as he began to be able to distinguish one dream from another, as he began to follow a particular thread of communication, he realized that the strangeness was inherent in the messages. The Keeper was prodding these someones with desires that Oykib had never felt, that he couldn’t understand; and then, suddenly, there would be something clear: a desire to go care for a child. A wish not to embarrass himself in front of his friends. And the more he listened, the more he began to glimpse what the stranger hungers were: a desire to dig, to tear at wood with his hands. A desire to smear himself with clay. These things made no sense, and yet as Oykib sat in the shadow of the ship, stripping away his humanness, these desires swept over him and he felt-different. Other. Not himself.
He and Chveya had speculated recently, for she, too, had been catching glimpses, out of the corner of her eye, of inexplicable threads, not connecting one human to another. “And yet I can’t possibly be seeing any such thing,” she had told him. “I only see the threads connecting people that I can see, or at least people that I know. Yet I’ve seen no one that these threads could belong to.”
“Or you’ve seen them out of the corner of your eye,” Oykib had suggested. “Seen them without knowing what you’ve seen.”
“If that’s the case, then dozens of them have been gathered all around the village and the fields, and we haven’t seen them. Not once, not ever. That’s really a pretty silly idea.”
“But they tire gathered around us, all the time.”
“Around us, but far. You said what you heard was faint.”
“Compared to the Oversoul, that’s all. Like trying to hear a distant concert when somebody’s tootling on a fife right next to you.”
“See? You said it yourself-a distant concert.”
“What if someone is watching us?”
“What if they are?” Chveya had answered him, “Let them watch. The Keeper is also watching them”
Naturally, all those who believed in the truth of dreams were watching for the winged flyers and the burrowing rodents-what had Hushklh and Luet called them? Angels and Diggers. But in all Oykib’s listening, in all of Chveya’s glimpses of someone’s threads of loyalty and concern, they heard and saw nothing to tell them which of the strange species they had dreamed of their watchful neighbors might be. If it was either of them.
Whatever or whoever these strangers were, though, Oykib had been getting more and more disturbed by the dreams and desires coming into his head. The desire to eat something warm and salt-blooded, still quivering with life-when he first understood that one, it set him to retching with self-revulsion that he could desire such a thing. And even though he knew that the desire came from outside him, it stiO haunted him as if it had been his own desire. For the warm and salt-blooded something that he wanted to eat alive was, he understood, a soft, tender infant. There was something confusing in his image of it-a dazzle of sky, a leathery crackling blanket. Like all the communications between the Keeper and these strangers, nothing was every really definite. But this much Oykib knew: It had been a prayer from one of these creatures to the Keeper of Earth, and the prayer had been for the living flesh of a youngling.
What kind of monsters were these people?
I must tell someone, he thought; but he couldn’t. To tell anyone but Chveya would be to let them know that he had been overhearing all their most secret communication with the Oversold for many years. It would make them all feel spied upon, robbed, violated. And to tell Chveya would be to terrify her about the safety of their firstborn child, already growing in her womb; about the safety of the little children she was teaching in the school every day.
So while he could tell her most of what he overheard, he couldn’t tell her the worst things; for this past week, he couldn’t explain to her why he woke up sweating and gagging in the middle of the night, or why he had grown silent in the past few days, barely speaking to her or to anyone.
Tonight, though, tonight had answered so many questions. For when this bat with its leathery wings came down and landed on the roof of a nearby storage tent, Oykib had sensed a different kind of being entirely. This creature, too, was getting an almost continuous stream of communication from the Keeper in yet another unfamiliar language of desires; but it was brighter and clearer, though more fearful as well. There were questions, and they were formed in ideas that Oykib could understand; best yet, they were linked with language. He didn’t understand the words, but he knew that the language could be learned.
The desires, though, he understood very well indeed. A wish not to disappoint others; a desire to protect his wife and children; a hunger for secrets.
Hunger for secrets. Into Oykib’s mind, as he watched the creature there on the tent roof, came an image of whose secrets the flyer was trying to decipher. Two pictures came into his mind almost at once. A vague image of a human head made of unfired clay, large and monstrous; and then, much more clearly, the image of Nafai in the flesh. Only it wasn’t Nafai. It was a creature just like this one, only with patchy hair and tattered wings, unable to fly, and yet respected, being listened to by all the others.
It was Narai, but it was also not-Nafai.
Then, suddenly, he understood. It’s this creature’s word for us, for human beings. Old man. Old people. We’re the old people.
But that would imply that they knew that humans had once lived on Earth before. That was absurd. Nothing could possibly be remembered for forty million years. And how could they remember anyway? As far as he knew, these creatures had not yet evolved into sentient beings when humans last walked upon the Earth.
Then the creature leapt from the tent and swept quickly over the clearing to the base of the starship. There, as he touched the metal, then rapped upon it with his fingers, he was speaking to the Keeper-no, singing to the Keeper, so rapturous was his mood. Oykib felt as if this creature’s awe and rejoicing were inside him. He had a thought, as clear as if it were his own thought: “The Old Ones still put music into the things they make.”
He had understood it, even though the words attached to the idea were in a language he had never heard before. No real sound had been uttered, and yet he knew inside his memory what this creature’s voice would sound like. High and musical, rich in subtle lingering vowels, but with no sibilants or nasals or even fricatives. The only consonants were plosives and stops, and yet they were no less musical than the tonguing of a flautist, making fluttering interruptions in a tune. T’s and K’s, G’s and P’s, B’s and D’s, and a guttural consonant that Oykib knew his own throat could not possibly make. Sometimes these consonants had an extra puff of air; sometimes they were stopped. It was a beautiful language.
More important, though, was the fact that the desires were not dark and violent, and the Keeper did not seem to be struggling to restrain this creature. Rather than distracting him, the Keeper was encouraging him, reinforcing his desires. The contrast came as such a relief to Oykib after all these weeks and days of confusion and darkness that he spoke aloud. “At last the Keeper has brought a friend to us,” he said.
He had forgotten how careful and watchful the creature-no, the angel-had been. He hadn’t realized that the angel hadn’t seen him there in the darkness. But as soon as he heard his own voice, he knew it was too loud, too sudden. The angel leapt almost a man’s height into the air and then beat his wings in a frenzy to rise higher, out of harm’s way.
But terror didn’t rule him. He flew back, swooping around as if to get a good look at Oykib. Well, look to your heart’s content, said Oykib, standing with his hands open and spread wide. I’ll not harm you, Oykib tried to say with his body.
And then to the Keeper he said, Help him to know I’m not his enemy.
As usual, there was no answer. Others could get their dreams and their whispered silent words of guidance; Oykib could only overhear them, never receive them directly for himself. For once, though, with the memory of the angel’s language and desires still fresh, Oykib did not regret the lack. Perhaps it was the better gift, to hear others.
When the angel winged its way into the night sky, heading up the canyon in moonlight, Oykib walked around the starship and headed back to his house. He could see the flash of the lantern. Who was on duty tonight? Meb? Vast” One of the Elemaki, at any rate.
Obring, that’s who it was, Obring always swung the lantern as he walked, making it impossible for him to see any strange motions, for the lantern itself created moving shadows that would mask any real movement that might take place. Oykib had heard Elemak remonstrating with Obring about it once. Obring had only laughed and said, “There’s nothing to see, Elya. And besides, it’s Vblemak we all obey now, not you, remember?”
Elemak remembered. Oykib knew that. And while Elemak never spoke to the Oversold in prayer or conversation, he did curse, and when his curses had real intent behind them, their very intensity moved them into the pattern of communication with the Oversoul, so Oykib could hear him. Silent curses, but nothing said aloud. The man was controlling himself. And at the end there was a prayer, or perhaps only a mantra: I am no wordbreaker. I will keep the oath.
Oykib had no doubt which oath he meant-it was the oath to Father, to obey him as long as he was alive to rule over them. Better than anyone except Hushidh and Chveya, who could see the loyalties of the colony laid out like a map before them, Oykib knew that peace in the colony was only skin deep. Everyone knew who the Elemaki were, and who the Nafari; everyone could see that the village was virtually divided down the middle, with Nafari on the east and Elemaki on the west. The colony was not united and never would be. Health to you, Volemak. Health and long life. Let there be no war among us before my children are safely born and grown. Live forever, old man. You are the only cord that holds this harvest together in a single sheaf.
So there was Obring, on watch but worthless at it, while Oykib was aware of dark mutterings and savage prayers out in the darkness and dared not speak to anyone about it.
And tonight, was there some new urgency about it? Some sense of triumph tinged with fear? Daring, that’s what it was. Someone was daring something that they had not dared before. And the Keeper was sending a constant stream of distractions. Something’s happening. What is it? Speak to me, Keeper! Speak to me, Over-soul!
Chveya was asleep when he came into the house. It was often this way. Up at dawn, Chveya worked hard all day, as if her pregnancy should make no difference in her schedule. Then she would come home and fall asleep without undressing, wherever she happened to sit or lie down. Once Oykib came home and found her asleep standing up, not leaning on anything, just standing like a flagpole in the middle of the single room of the house, her eyes closed. Breathing heavily-had she been lying down, it would have been a snore.
Tonight she was on the bed, but fully dressed, her feet still dangling to the floor. He wanted not to waken her-but her legs would be asleep in the morning and it would cause her much discomfort, especially if she woke up needing to void her bladder in the night, and her legs wouldn’t support her.
Besides, it was important. What had happened tonight, the angel coming to him, or at least to the ship> touching it, and the clarity of his voice to the Keeper and of the Keeper’s voice to him. The fact that Oykib could hear his language and understand it. And the murmurings and stirrings of the other, darker beings who surrounded the village.
He moved her feet onto the bed. Chveya awoke.
“Oh, again?” she murmured. “I meant to wait up for you.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Sleep when you can, you need it.”
“But you’re upset,” she said.
“Happy and worried,” he corrected her. Then he told her all that had happened and what he thought it might mean.
“So the angels are starting to come to us,” she said.
“But you know that it tells us who the others we’ve been seeing are. Those rat-creatures. Out there in the dark.”
“I think you’re right,” said Chveya.
“Didn’t Hushidh have a dream of them stealing her children?”
“And you feel as though something has broken tonight?” asked Chveya. “I think we have to give warning. Put on extra watches.”
“And tell them what? Explain what?” asked Oykib.
“Explain nothing. When we ask Grandfather to double, triple the watch tonight, he’ll do it even if we tell him it’s just a feeling. He has respect for feelings.”
They headed for the door, but no sooner had they opened it than a scream sounded from the Elemaki side of the village. It came from a human throat, and all the grief of the world was in it.
Eiadh was the one who had screamed. In moments the adults were gathered around her. She wasn’t screaming now, but it took great effort for her to control her voice as she explained.
“Zhivya’s gone!” she said. “The baby. Taken from her crib. I woke up to see them, like low shadows, running.” Now she did lose control, the horror of it filling her voice. “They were holding the four corners of her blanket. My baby was stolen away by animals!”
Elemak had been-somewhere. Not in the house with her, that was certain. Now, though, he was on his knees in the doorway. “Look at this footprint,” he said. “An animal made this. Coming in and going out-two animals, actually. And heavily burdened when they left.” He got up and looked at them. “I saw a flying creature go down into the fields, then up onto the food storage tent, and then down behind the ship. A moment later it took off, flying up the canyon. No doubt it went to get its friends.” He touched the footprint. “That . . . thing .. . could have made this print. I’m going to follow it up the canyon.”
But Oykib looked at the footprint and knew that Elemak was wrong. The angel’s feet had been like hands, or perhaps more like powerful visegrips. These footprints came from a creature with flatter feet and long heavy-clawed toes. The feet of a runner or a digger. Not a creature that flies, that clings to branches.
“The angel didn’t make this print,” said Oykib.
Elemak looked up at him with steely hatred in his eyes.
Nafai at once interrupted. “Elemak is the one who knows how to read the tracks of animals, Oykib.”
“But I saw the angel-“
“So did Elemak,” said Nafai, “and it’s his daughter.” He turned to Elemak. “Tell us what to do, Elemak.”
Chveya turned to Oykib and, for a moment, silently buried her face in his shoulder. It was the way she responded when Nafai said exactly the wrong thing- which was surprisingly often, for a man as bright as he was. Nafai was correct as far as he knew; it was quite proper for everyone to defer to Elemak’s judgment in this matter. But he should have known by now that Elemak would not be grateful to prevail because Nafai told everyone to let him have his way.
Besides, Elemak should not prevail, because he was wrong. Oykib knew that angels hadn’t taken the child. The kidnappers were no flyers. They had to be searched for on the ground. Worse, those who did take Zhivya had among them at least a few who hungered to eat the living flesh of an infant. There was real urgency in the search, and it would be a criminal waste of time to go off trying to track flying creatures who didn’t have the baby.
As if she could hear his thoughts, Mother put a hand on Oykib’s shoulder. “Be patient, my son,” she said, “You know what you know, and you’ll be heard in due time.”
Due time? Oykib looked down at Chveya. Her lips were pursed; she was as worried as he was, and as frustrated.
Elemak was organizing his search party, assigning men where to go.
Volemak spoke up. “Are all the adults gathered here? Who’s watching the children, when we already know that they aren’t safe in their homes?”
At once the women with children began rushing out of the house, back to their homes.
“Elemak,” said Volemak. “Leave me a few men here, to protect the village while you’re gone.”
Elemak agreed at once. “You keep Nafai and Oykib here-he can tell you his theories to his heart’s content. Give me the other men, though.”
“I’m a man,” said Yasai.
Oykib restrained himself from saying, “Yes, if a dandelion is a tree.” This wasn’t the time for teasing. And Yasai was a man.
“If there’s an attack,” said Volemak, “we’ll need more. Perhaps the younger men.”
Now Elemak dug in his heels. “Nafai has the cloak. If you need more, you have the older boys. We’re trying to track creatures who fly. I can’t do it without as many men as possible.”
“I can protect the village,” said Protchnu, trying to look older than his nine years.
Elemak looked at him with a serious expression. “You’ll have to. Obey your grandfather without question.”
Protchnu nodded. Oykib could not help but think that if Elemak had ever followed his own advice, everyone’s lives would have been a lot happier over the past few months.
Moments later Elemak was off, leaving behind, of the men, only Nafai, Issib, Volemak, and Oykib.
“Welcome to the ranks of the useless,” said Issib wryly.
“Useless? I hardly think so,” said Volemak. “All right, now, Oykib. Tell us what you know.”
“I saw an angel tonight,” said Oykib. “The same one Elemak saw. But he was only a couple of meters from me, and I saw his foot. It couldn’t possibly have made this print.”
“Who, then?” asked Nafai.
“There are others,” said Chveya. “I’ve caught glimpses of them. Never anything I could see clearly, but enough that I’ve begun to make connections. Hushidh has got some hints of this, too. They’re all around us. But they’re low, in the underbrush. Like Eiadh said, low shadows. Sometimes in the trees.”
“You know this, and you haven’t seen them?” asked Issib.
“I see the connections among them. Faintly.” Chveya smiled grimly. “It’s the best we’ve got.”
“Not enough,” said Nafai. He fixed Oykib with a cold stare. “Stop playing games, Oykib. What do you know?”
For the first time it occurred to Oykib that maybe he hadn’t kept his secret as well as he thought. “What I know is that there was no malice in the angel. In his mind we’re the Old Ones, and he’s filled with respect and awe. But there are other minds, and they’ve been watching us for months, and some of them. . ..” He glanced at Eiadh, realized that he had to be careful how he said it. “Some of them might be dangerous to Zhivya.”
“The ones that we’ve been calling diggers,” said Nafai.
Volemak nodded. “And they live nearby.”
Issib laughed, “What, we get shovels and start digging?” He waved his arm to show the vast area they’d have to dig up.
“Burrows have entrances,” said Nafai.
“We’ve been exploring all around here,” said Protchnu. “We’ve never seen any holes.”
“Why don’t we do the obvious thing?” said Oykib. “The thing that Elemak would have done, if he hadn’t been so sure that the kidnappers could fly. Follow the footprints.”
The diggers’ prints were lost almost at once in the mess that their own feet had made when they ran in response to Eiadh’s scream. It didn’t help that Rasa was leading the women in gathering the little children out of their beds and into the schoolhouse. Despite the tumult, though, Volemak managed to get lanterns distributed to the men and the older boys, and in a few minutes Protchnu gave a cry. “Here!” he shouted. “They weren’t dodging or anything, they just ran in a straight line.”
It was true-the trail picked up just where it might have been expected from the direction the diggers first ran upon leaving Elemak’s and Eiadh’s door. The others ran to join Protchnu, but stayed behind as he led the way toward the edge of the woods.
“Wait,” said Volemak. “Nafai, Oykib-you spread out to the sides and keep watch. I don’t want Protchnu walking head down into a trap.”
Carrying lanterns in one hand, gardening tools as makeshift weapons in the other, the ragtag little army entered the verge of the forest. Four adult men, a bunch of little boys, and the young women who had no children yet-that would strike terror in their enemies. As soon as they entered the woods, the tracking became harder-leaves on the forest floor didn’t hold footprints very clearly. It took Protchnu a while to get even six meters into the woods, and then he lost the trail.
Moving slowly and carefully, they all scouted an ever-widening circle, trying to pick up the trail again. Then Oykib heard a low cry from Protchnu, standing only a few paces off. The boy was looking up into the branches. “I’m so stupid!” he said, and immediately ran back to where he had lost the trail.
Oykib followed him. “You think they carried the baby through the trees?”
“Up into one tree,” said Protchnu. “Remember the hollow stumps we found when we were felling trees?”
“Shedemei said it wasn’t impossible for some disease to have. . . .”
By then, though, Protchnu had clambered up the tree and was pressing against the trunk here and there, pressing hard. “Protchnu, you aren’t looking for secret passages, are you?”
“We burned the hollow trees because we couldn’t use them for construction,” said Protchnu. “We should have studied them. The prints lead right to this tree and disappear. They went somewhere.”
Protchnu suddenly stopped and grinned. “It gave a little here. Hold your torch up, Uncle Oykib. I found me a door.” Using the blade of the hoe he was carrying, Protchnu pried into a fissure in the bark and sure enough, an oblong patch of trunk opened up like a door. It had been a seamless part of the trunk until that moment.
“Protchnu, remind me never to call you stupid,” said Oykib.
Protchnu barely heard him. He had already turned around and had his legs into the opening.
Oykib set down his lantern and fairly leapt up the trunk to grab Protchnu’s arm. “No!” he cried. “We don’t need to be trying to rescue two of Elemak’s children!”
“I’m the only one who can fit through the door!” Protchnu yelled, struggling to get free of Oykib’s grip.
“Proya, you’ve been brilliant, so don’t turn stupid on me!” Oykib shouted back. “You can’t go feetfirst into their den! You don’t know whether there’ll even be room down there to use the hoe. Come on, get your legs out before they cut off your feet!”
Reluctantly, Protchnu backed out of the door.
By now, the others had gathered. Nafai was carrying an axe, as was Oykib. When Protchnu was out of the tree, they began to work quickly, chopping into the trunk. In only a few minutes, they had torn away so much of the surviving trunk that the tree toppled.
Now the opening wasn’t just a tiny doorway. It was large enough that any of the adults could drop down into the hole. And, lowering his lantern as far down into the opening as he could, Nafai announced that the chamber was tall enough for a human to stand, and the tunnels large enough for hurnans to use them-on all fours.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea at the moment,” said Volemak.
“We don’t have time to waste, Father,” said Nafai.
“Stand up and look around you, Nyef.”
They raised their lanterns and looked. In the trees, on the ground, hundreds of diggers surrounded them, brandishing clubs and stone-tipped spears.
“I think they’ve got the numbers on us,” said Issib.
“They’re ugly,” said Sevet’s son Umene. “Their skin’s all pink and hairless.”
“Ugly is the least of our problems,” said Volemak,
“Any idea who their leader is?” asked Nafai.
“Didn’t Chveya come with us?” asked Oykib.
She was already scanning the diggers. She frowned, then pointed. “He’s there, behind those others.”
At once Nafai stripped his shirt off over his head, baring the skin of his chest and back. As he did, his skin began to glow, to shine. The cloak of the starmaster, normally invisible as it lived under his skin, was now radiating light in order to make a god of Nafai-at least in these diggers’ eyes. At once Oykib heard a cacophony of prayers and curses. “It’s working,” Oykib said quietly. “The sphincter muscles are loosening. There’s going to be a circle of extrafertile ground when this night is over.”
A couple of the boys laughed. None of the adults did.
Nafai walked over and stood before the place that Chveya had pointed out. “Which one of these little monsters do I want?” he asked.
Chveya came up beside him, careful not to touch his glowing skin. Now she could pick out the leader, a large, strong one, wearing a necklace of small bones around his neck. “The one with the trophy necklace.”
Nafai raised his hand and pointed. His finger glowed. Suddenly a spark leapt from his hand to the leader of the diggers. The trophy necklace wasn’t much help to him-he immediately sprawled flat on the ground, trembling.
“You didn’t kill him, did you?” asked Chveya.
Oykib could barely hear her. The tumult of terrified prayers from the diggers drowned out almost all other perceptions in his mind. Yet even their terror was tainted with rage and with lust for vengeance. They feared Nafai, but they hated him and wanted him destroyed. “If you think you’re making friends,” Oykib murmured.
“Oykib,” said Nafai, ignoring both their comments, “I need you to do the speaking. I’m busy being a god. I can’t let them see me struggling to communicate. Besides, you’re the only one with a hope of understanding their responses.”
Oykib was astonished. “How can I talk to them? I don’t know their language.”
“You caught some of the angel language, didn’t you? The Oversoul said you did.”
“But I’ve never understood or even heard their-“
“You’re about to hear it now,” said Nafai.
So the Oversoul is aware of me and knows what I can do, thought Oykib. It was the first confirmation of this that he had ever had. But did the Oversoul know how much he couldn’t do?
He stepped forward, walking toward the leader, who was being helped back to his feet. “The baby,” said Oykib. He pantomimed rocking a baby in his arms. The diggers had been watching the humans long enough to understand what the gesture represented.
The digger king babbled something. Oykib was surprised by the language. It was the opposite of the angel language-all sibilants, fricatives, nasals, with a sound, not of music, but of spitting and humming. Does it only sound like an evil and slimy language to me because of what I know about their prayers and hungers?
When the digger king was speaking to his followers, Oykib understood nothing, of course. In a few moments the diggers dragged forward four of their soldiers and threw them down at Nafai’s feet. Now Oykib could get a clear sense of the terror, the cursing and prayers of the four. “These are the ones who did the kidnapping,” said Oykib. “I think they’re giving them to you for punishment.”
Immediately Nafai turned his back on the offering. “Tell them it’s the baby I want, not vengeance.”
“Oh, I’m supposed to do that with sign language?” said Oykib. But he tried, all the same, using the same symbol for the baby, and then gesturing for the four to be taken away.
But the diggers apparently thought the gesture meant something else. At a command from the king, four other diggers bounded out and put the blades of their spears against the throats of the four kidnappers. “No!” Oykib shouted, hearing Chveya’s voice along with his. Nafai turned around and with a single sweep of his dazzling arm he knocked all eight diggers to the ground. Then he seemed to go berserk, pointing at trees, one at a time, until a spot in their branches burst into flame,
“It’s too wet to start a real fire going,” Oykib murmured.
“I’m counting on that,” said Nafai. “You think I want to burn down our village?”
As far as the diggers were concerned, though, this was the rage of the gods and their forest was doomed. The king rushed out and threw himself down on his belly at Nafai’s feet. Then, almost at once, he flipped himself onto his back and flung his arms and legs outward, so his naked belly was completely exposed.
Oykib’s mind was filled with prayers, and now, because the digger king was close, because Oykib now knew something of the context, he was able to understand more of what the king was saying. “He’s pleading with the god-with you-to kill him and spare his people.”
“So he wa worthy king,” murmured Nafai. “Tell him we want the baby and nothing else. But first I’m going to respect his offering.” Nafai took a single stride, so he straddled the supine body of the king. Then he reached down and touched the king’s chest with the blade of the axe. “What do you think?” asked Nafai. “They’re a violent people, right? Help me on this, I’m making up a ritual as I go along,”
“No blood,” said Oykib. “That wouldn’t be right. It’s the other king who does the blood rituals.”
“Other king?” asked Nafai.
Chveya was startled, but then confirmed it. “There’s as much loyalty to another as to this one.” Then she frowned. “But there’s someone else, too. Someone that the king himself feels allegiance to. Someone underground.”
“No blood,” said Nafai. “So what should I do?”
“Give him the axe,” said Oykib. “That’s the thing that he hardly dares to hope for, but wants above all else. He’ll give you his spear and his bone necklace.”
Nafai let the handle of the axe slip out of his hands.
“No!” shouted Protchnu behind them. “Don’t give up your weapon! You never give up your weapon!”
“Shut up, Proya,” said Volemak mildly.
The digger king wrapped one hand around the shaft of the axe, then rolled to his belly and rose to his feet. He could lift the axe easily enough, but the handle wasn’t right for his hand and he couldn’t raise the head of the axe while holding the end of the handle. There was no reason to worry that he could use it as a weapon.
The king bent down and picked up his spear, then offered it to Nafai.
“What does it mean if I take this?” asked Nafai.
“I don’t know,” said Oykib. “It’s not like this stuff comes to me with a glossary and footnotes.”
Nafai took the spear. The king now lifted the bone necklace over his head and held it out to Nafai. “I don’t like the bones of this thing,” said Nafai, hesitant to take it.
“I don’t either,” said Oykib. “I think it’s time to demand Zhivya again.”
“And why do you think that?”
“Because I don’t like the way he’s praying for you to take the necklace. He really, really wants you to take it, but I don’t think it’s because he loves you.”
“All right,” said Nafai. “Tell him I want the baby.”
Oykib stepped between Nafoi and the king, effectively blocking the transfer of the necklace. The king rocked back on his haunches, looking-what? Was that anger? It looked like anger to Oykib. He made the sign for the baby, then shouted-no, screamed-right in the king’s face. “Bring us Zhivya or we’ll kill every last one of you ugly naked pink-skinned bastards!”
“Since they don’t understand you anyway,” said Chveya, “couldn’t you use language that we won’t have to explain to the little boys later?”
“He’s trying to communicate rage,” said Nafai. “Is it working?”
“Oh, it’s working,” said Chveya. “You and he are definitely gaining control over the situation. They don’t like you, though.”
“I’m heartbroken,” said Nafai,
“Break the spear,” said Oykib.
“What?” said Nafai.
“That’s what he’s afraid of, as he stands there holding the axe. He’s afraid you’ll break the spear.”
Nafai broke the handle of the spear across his knees. The crack of the breaking wood rang through the air.
At once the digger king took the axe in both hands and tried to break the handle. He couldn’t. It was too thick, too well-tempered.
“Do something else he can’t do,” said Oykib. “He has to fail twice.”
Nafai reached down and took the end of the spear that had the head on it. Using the tip of the spear as a knife, he cut quickly and deeply across his own belly. Blood immediately sprayed out onto the digger king’s face, and for a moment Oykib saw, to his horror, that Nafai had cut all the way through the muscle and exposed his bowels. In moments, though, the cloak of the starmaster began healing the wound, and as the diggers watched, the wound closed without a scar.
The digger king took the head of the axe in his hands, as if he contemplated his own disembowelment.
“I don’t want him to kill himself,” said Nafai. “I don’t have the power to heal him.”
“Don’t worry,” said Oykib. “You did exactly the right thing. The one thing the war king can’t do is shed his own blood for the people. Don’t ask me why, I just know that’s the quandary he’s trying to deal with.”
Chveya interrupted. “Someone else is coming.”
They looked up and saw that the digger army was indeed responding to someone else. “Not the blood king,” said Oykib. “It’s the mother.”
“The queen?”
“I think she’s the war king’s mate, yes,” said Oykib. “But she’s something more than that. They all call her ‘the mother.’ “
“What, they have a queen rat?” said Chveya. “Like a queen bee or a queen ant?”
“These are mammals,” Oykib reminded her. “It’s a religious title, I think. Like blood king and war king.” Then, tentatively, he made the sound he had heard in his mind. “Emeezem,” he said.
“What’s that?” asked Nafai.
“Her name. That’s the name they’re calling. And her title is Ovovoi.”
“Say her name again,” said Nafai. “I have to get it right the first time I say it.”
“Emeezem,” said Oykib. “It’s not as if I know for sure I’m right.”
Nafai lifted his chin and bawled out her name like a caller in a marketplace. “Emeezem!”
The diggers all fell silent. A single figure emerged from the woods and slowly approached Nafai.
She was obviously female, but the real surprise was that she was hairier than most of the males. She wore no decoration, but the pattern of graying in her hair served the purpose well enough. She looked regal; she also looked frail.
“She is begging the god to forgive her. She didn’t know what the foolish males were planning.”
“I want the baby,” said Nafai.
“She knows that. Her women are searching for the baby right now,” said Oykib. Then, suddenly, he realized what she was straining to see. “Hold your lantern up to Nafai’s face, Chveya.”
Chveya did it, and the digger queen covered her head and curled herself into a ball on the ground. “She can die happy now,” said Oykib, “because she’s seen your face in flesh at last.”
“My face?” asked Nafai.
“That’s what it seems to me she’s saying,” said Oykib. “You’re the one with the pipeline to the Over-soul. I’m having a hard time making sense of any of this.”
“Don’t get testy with me,” said Nafai. “The Over-soul doesn’t hear the things you’re hearing. Your connection with the Keeper is better than his.”
Oykib felt a glow suffuse throughout his body. Pride and fear, a strange mixture. The Oversold needs me to help with this-that was the pride. But the fear was stronger: If I make a mistake, there’s no one to correct me.
Emeezem uncurled herself from the ground. “She’s waited all her life for you,” said Oykib, trying to make sense of the images that flashed into his mind-images of herself as a child, of dark underground places. “She thinks it was you that made her queen. Because you accepted her.”
“When could I have done that?”
“When she was a little girl,” said Oykib. “I don’t understand it, but her childhood memories include you.”
“Her bond with you is incredibly strong,” said Chevya. “Stronger than her bond with her husband. It’s really amazing, Father.”
“She’s begging you to spare her husband’s life. He didn’t know about the kidnapping either. It was the blood king’s son who did it.”
Emeezem hissed and sputtered a fierce command to her husband, and he rose to his feet and shouted almost the same words. Moments later, a proud-looking male strode out, casting aside his weapon in a flamboyant gesture. He walked up to stand before Nafai, but he did not bow or show respect in any way.
Emeezem and the war king both muttered commands to him, but he showed no sign of hearing them.
The queen turned to Nafai and spoke a stream of what sounded like horrible invective.
“She’s begging you to strike Fusum dead,” said Oykib. “That’s the young one’s name-he plotted everything even though everyone had been commanded not to harm us.”
“I’m not going to kill him,” said Nafai.
“You have to do something,” said Oykib. “This is the guiltiest one. The war king didn’t dare to touch him since he’s the blood king’s son, so that’s why he gave you the four actual kidnappers. But you’re a god, Nyef. You have to do something to him or-well, I don’t know. Chaos. The universe collapsing. Something really bad, anyway.”
“I hate this,” said Nafai. “How about if I take him prisoner?”
“And put him in our secure prison?” asked Chveya. “Good thing we built a jail first thing.”
“Not a prisoner, then,” said Nafai. “A hostage?”
“Strike him down,” said Oykib. “They’re terrified because you hesitate.”
“All I want is Zhivya back,” said Nafai. “I don’t want any corpses here.”
Volemak strode forward and took his place beside Nafai. “Bow to me,” he said to Nafai. “Or whatever passes for a bow in their culture.”
“Get on all fours and kiss Father’s belly, then,” said Oykib.
“You’re kidding,” said Nafai. “That’s not what the war king did to show respect to me?
“The war king was offering himself as an unworthy sacrifice. You’re greeting Father as your king and father.”
“Do it,” said Volemak. “They don’t have to know that I don’t have the powers of the cloak. They have to see that you, too, are taking directions from someone. That tells them that powerful as you are, they haven’t begun to see our powers.”
Nafai dropped down on all fours. But from that position he couldn’t reach his father’s belly to kiss it. He let his hands off the ground and rose up high enough, then pressed his face into Volemak’s shirt.
At once there was a murmur among the diggers.
“Can you glow brighter than you already are?” asked Volemak.
“Yes,” said Nafai.
“All right, when I touch your head, really light yourself up.”
Volemak reached down with a flamboyant gesture and touched Nafai’s head. At once Nafai seemed almost to explode with light. Even the humans gasped then, as the diggers cried out in terror.
“Well done,” said Volemak. “I figured we needed to juice up the perception of power. Now, knock down this proud little puppy. Don’t kill him, just put him out like these others.”
Nafai rose to his feet, still glowing, and reached out his hand, pointing toward Fusum.
The son of the blood king didn’t cower, didn’t even flinch. He just looked Nafai in the face, defiant. Then the air between them sizzled, his limbs leapt our rigidly, and he keeled over like a falling tree. He lay there twitching.
“You do have a natural sense of theatre,” said Volemak. “Now, tell Oykib to point to all nine of these sleepy little diggers and have them carried to the ship.”
“To the ship?” asked Nafai.
“Don’t let it be seen that you argue with me,” said Volemak sharply. “Just do it. Hostages. And Shedemei can keep them drugged up or even put them in suspended animation while she runs some nondestructive studies on them. Trust me, Nafai.”
“I do trust you, Father. Forgive me for hesitating.” He turned to Oykib and elaborately instructed him exactly as Volemak had told him to.
It felt absurd, at first, for Nafai to repeat to him exactly the words that they had all heard Father say. But as Nafai went through it it took on the power of a ritual. It was the expression of authority. The king. The son of the king. The servant of the son. The diggers needed to see the show. But so, too, did the other humans, especially the boys. Especially Protchnu. This is power and authority, Proya, thought Oykib. This is how it should work, and this is why your father is such a failure-because Elemak could never accept the rule of someone over him. Those who will not be ruled are not fit to rule anyone else.
So when Nafai finished his recitation, Oykib made a great deal of ceremony about pointing to each of the unconscious diggers and indicating that other diggers should pick them up and carry them to the ship.
The queen seemed to understand the dance that they were doing. In her turn, she spoke sharply to her husband, the war king, and then he in his own turn addressed the soldiers waiting in the trees. Soon, in groups of four, they gathered around the unconscious ones and lifted them from the ground.
At that moment, other voices called out from the woods. Emeezem called out an answer, and four female diggers emerged from the undergrowth. Each held the corner of a blanket, and in the middle lay Zhivya, who was laughing. She was enjoying the ride.
“Quickly,” said Volemak. “Protchnu, run back to the village and fetch Eiadh. Bring her out here!” To Nafai he said, “Don’t reach for the baby. Make them wait. They’ll deliver Zhivya into her mother’s arms.”
They held the pose in silence. It felt like forever, though it couldn’t have been more than five minutes. Finally Protchnu returned, leading Eiadh, who cried out in joy when she saw the baby. She ran to where the four female diggers stood, and reached down to scoop Zhivya out of the blanket. “Zhivoya, my lively one, my laughing one,” she sang, laughing and crying and turning around and around.
“All right,” said Volemak. “Nafai, tell Oykib to tell them to carry the hostages to the ship. And order Dazya to lead them there, so she can explain to Shedemei what’s needed, I want them kept unconscious and I want them thoroughly studied.”
Dazya, the erstwhile First Child, stepped forward. “I understand,” she said.
“But you apparently didn’t understand well enough to know that I wanted Nafai to give you the order,” said Volemak, not looking at her.
Nafai turned to Dazya and gave the exact orders that Volemak had already given. Dazya, blushing, obeyed.
The digger soldiers formed a procession behind her, carrying the nine unconscious ones toward the ship.
The order of authority had now been clearly established. Queen Emeezem now addressed herself directly to Oykib. The trouble was, she didn’t perceive him as a god, and therefore when she spoke to him, her words weren’t a prayer. It wasn’t a communication with the Keeper or the Oversoul, and so to Oykib it was nothing but unintelligible hissing and humming. “I can’t understand them unless they think they’re speaking to a god,” said Oykib.
“Just stand there and refuse to hear them,” said Volemak. “When she pauses, point to Nafai.”
Oykib obeyed. She quickly got the idea and spoke the same words to Nafai. Oykib could understand her again.
Or maybe he couldn’t. “She begs you to come and see how well they’ve . . . cared for your. ...”
“Cared for my what?”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Oykib.
“Cared for my what?”
“Your head,” said Oykib.
“Where does she want me to go?”
“It’s underground,” said Oykib. “She wants you to follow her underground.”
Nafai turned to Volemak and elaborately repeated all that Oykib had said. Volemak made a show of listening with a grave demeanor.
“First make all these soldiers go away,” said Volemak. “And then you, Nafai, will follow her into the tunnels. You’re the one with the cloak. If they mean to betray us, you’re the only one who’ll be safe,”
“I have to take Oykib with me,” said Nafai. “I don’t understand a word they’re saying.”
Volemak hesitated only a moment. “Keep him safe,” he said.
It was astonishing that a god would condescend to such a degree. Emeezem dared to ask him because she was old and had no fear, and because in her life she had learned to hope even for things that could not be hoped. And just as he had accepted her when she was an ugly, undesirable child so many years ago, so now the god accepted her again and followed her down into the city.
To leave the world of light and come into dimness because she asked! To let the bright shimmer of his immortal body illuminate the earthen walls of the deep temples! She wanted to sing, to dance her way down the tunnels. But she was leading a god to his temple. Dignity had to be maintained.
Especially for Mufruzhuuzh’s sake; he needed dignity today. No one would criticize him for what had happened-after all, it was Fusum who plotted the stealing of the baby, forcing a deadly confrontation that Muf had neither sought nor desired. And he had faced the god bravely-all saw that he had no fear when he offered his heart for the god to take. Then, when the god asked him to match impossible feats, requiring Muf to do things that only the blood king could do, if anyone could do it at all-well, no one could fault him for hesitating, for failing to act. He had nowhere to turn, so he did not turn at all.
Still, it was humiliating for him, that his wife should have to come forward and extricate him from the dilemma. Never mind that it was rare for the wife of the war king to be the root mother also. He was shamed when his wife was accepted by the god who had merely posed unanswerable riddles to him.
But could Emeezem help it that the baby came to her hands? Muf didn’t know where the baby had been hidden-it was only when Fusum’s sister realized what a terrible thing he had done that she came to Emeezem with the truth, and by then Muf was already facing down the god. It was just an unfortunate set of circumstances. Mufruzhuuzh was still war king. The god would set everything to rights.
The god was so large he had to bow down on all fours to travel through the tunnels. Of course, he could just as easily have walked upright, tearing out the roofs of the tunnels just by passing through them, But he chose not to, leaving the tunnels undamaged for the people to use. Such kindness! Such generosity to mere earth-crawling worms like us!
Around them she could hear the patter of a thousand feet, as men and women and children scurried to every open passageway, hoping for a glimpse of the god as he passed. Emeezem could see hands reaching up to let the light of the god’s body touch pink hands; parents held up their babies so the light of the god would bless their tiny bodies. And still the god followed her, his light un-diminished.
They came to the chamber where, so many years ago, Emeezem-no, she was mere Emeez in those days- had first seen the unmarred head of the god. She stopped, and bcseeched him to forgive them for leaving him in such obscurity for so long.
She heard the undergod speak to him, and he answered. Then he licked his finger, reached out his hand, and touched the lintel of the doorway. Thus did he leave the fluid of his body on the door of the place. That was more than mere forgiveness. She keened in relief, and many others joined in with her. She could hear one voice, a man, singing, “We put your glorious head in darkness, not worshipping it because in the day we could not see your light. But you return the waters of life to us, and bring light into the stomach of the earth. So noble, so great!” Others sang their assent to his words: “So noble! So great! So noble! So great!”
The god paid them the compliment of staying there, still, unmoving, till the song ended. Then Emeezem moved on, leading him farther up the corridor, to the temple she had caused to be built for him, starting the very day she was chosen as root mother. Because the head was so large, she had decided that the god must also be very tall, and so she had made the people dig his temple so low that the ceiling could be high. She also placed the temple so that the roof reached up into a crevice in the rock, letting a bit of daylight reflect down into the chamber. And in the brightest spot of the soft diffused glow, on a pedestal made of bones of the skymeat, she had placed his head.
It was nighttime now, though, so there was little illumination when he came into the temple. Instead he brought the light with him, and it brightened every corner of the room when he rose to his feet. Others came through the door after him, gathering along the walls of the temple, watching as he approached the pedestal where the sculpture sat. Now he would see how they had worshipped him, once they understood that his strange large head was a sign of power and not of weakness. Hadn’t the entire spring harvest of infant skymeat been offered to him that first year, so that his pedestal immediately rose at once to be as high as any god’s? Hadn’t he also had more than his share of skymeat broken open and shared among the people in his honor every year since then? Yet still no one had used his head in the time of mating, for they understood that he was not to be worshipped in that way.
The god walked slowly to the face and stood before it. It glowed in the brightness of his body, answering his bright face with an earthen one. He reached out to k, touched it. Then he lifted his head upward toward the source of the room’s faint natural starlight and sank to his knees before the statue.
I see, thought Emeezem. You show us how to worship you properly. We cannot do exactly what you have done, because our knees do not bend in that direction. But we will touch the face as you touched it. Was there a reason why it was the lips you touched? Should it always be the lips? Or will we touch that part of the face that we want to have bless us? You must tell me. Perhaps later, if you should deign to soil your lips by speaking our language, or if your undergod should choose to speak our impure tongue. We touch your face, look at the light, then go down on our haunches before your face and gaze at it. Yes, I will remember. We will all remember.
Like all the other women, Shedemei was at once frightened, repelled, and fascinated by the procession of diggers who came into the village, carrying their compatriots who had been knocked unconscious by Nafai. But the responsibility for doing something with them was hers, and so she quickly set her personal feelings aside and led the diggers into the ship. She knew at once what Volemak’s purpose was; he had seen her doing nondestructive scans and studies of the few animals they had revived, and knew that she could learn a vast amount about a creature using the equipment on the ship. It was imperative that they understand the physical structures and systems that gave shape to the lives of the diggers, and yet it was just as important that they not be harmed.
The trouble was that it might not be such a good idea to let the diggers see the inside of the ship. From the little that Dza had said, she knew that Nafai had overawed them with the powers of the cloak of the starmaster. Perhaps the smooth and shiny surfaces of the inside of the ship would enhance that effect; but perhaps not. There was definitely danger in letting the diggers see that the humans were, after all, human, that what miracles they did were done with tools and machines and not by godlike powers inherent in them.
But that was for another day. Volemak had made his decision, and it was almost certainly best. Even if it wasn’t, Shedemei would obey. The peace they had had these past months since arriving on Earth depended on supporting his authority; she would obey him even if he was flat wrong. Peace-that’s all Shedemei wanted. A chance to do her work without having to worry about which side she was on and who was on top in the endless family struggles among Volemak’s and Rasa’s children.
The first order of business once the carriers were gone was to sedate the diggers so that they didn’t awaken at an inconvenient time. There had been forty million years of evolution since the biota of Earth and Harmony had diverged, but the most conservative aspect of life was at the chemical level. A light dosage of the safest sedative should do the job. She spoke to the medical computer as she weighed each of the bodies in turn. The dosages were meted out and she pressed the pads against the pink skin.
Pink hairless skin-why would these rodents have lost their fiir? She suspected that there was no sound evolutionary reason for it-it was a cultural thing. Some standard of beauty became general and then only those who exhibited the beautiful trait were able to mate.
Soon pink skin would predominate in the culture while hairiness would be relegated to a few despised members. Otherwise, the trait made no sense. Digger skin had no melanin. No wonder they had to stay in shadows and tunnels all the time, unlike their ancient rat ancestors-they couldn’t bear the sunburn if they emerged from the trees.
Once they were all sedated, she meant to begin scanning them at once. But then sleepiness swept over her like a wave at the beach, and she realized that after being awake all night this was hardly the time to conduct serious investigations. So she used the cart and carried each digger in turn to a suspended animation chamber. She set the chambers to normal life support so they wouldn’t kick into suspended animation mode-there was too much risk that the suspended animation dosages wouldn’t be right for diggers and they’d be unrevivable.
Then she went to her berth and lay down, just for a nap. A couple of hours and she’d be fine. It reminded her of the way she had lived in Basilica before they persuaded her-no, tricked her, manipulated her, forced her-to join Volemak’s exodus into the wilderness. In those days, when she was hot on the trail of some elusive gene, she could work around the clock, taking short naps that amounted to little more than a couple of hours of sleep a day. The excitement of discovery and creation was more important than sleeping and eating. She had never wanted that life to be interrupted.
Well, it had been interrupted, and she wasn’t entirely unhappy about it. For one thing, Basilica had been destroyed in Moozh’s bid for empire, so her old life couldn’t have continued in any case. Even if Basilica still stood, however, Shedemei’s journey in the wildnerness had given her many good gifts. Her two children, Padarok and Dabrota-their names meant Gift and Kindness, and they had grown up to merit them. Zdorab, her shy and complicated husband, a man who had never desired women and yet had given her two children, not to mention good companionship for these many years. Despite his lack of desire, despite her lack of interest, they had helped each other join the great stream of life, of creation. Wouldn’t it have been sad if I had spent my life bending and shaping life, and yet had never taken part in it myself? I was spared that, I am glad of it.
But now Rokya and Dabya were adults. Rokya was married to Hushidh’s daughter Dza; Dabya was married to Luet’s son Zhatva. They were going to be parents soon. They didn’t need Shedemei anymore. Zdorab had never needed her, not really. Liked her, yes, even loved her, but it wasn’t a need. So why am I still here? she wondered. I don’t want to see this community torn apart. I don’t want to watch as my children have to choose sides. I don’t want to be here when blood is shed, when lives are lost. I don’t even want to care about the outcome. I just want to be by myself, working on plants, on animals, studying how the biosystems have diverged, understanding more and more of the way life creates itself. I want to know why giant cattle roam the plains north of this massif. I want to know why two sentient species evolved in such close proximity without one of them destroying the other. I want to know why the Oversoul brought us to this place of all places, instead of to one of the many locations where we could have established our colony without interfering in the lives of diggers or angels.
I want my dream to come true.
Ah, yes, that was the underlying wish above all wishes. The dream that the Keeper of Earth had sent her, so many years ago, a dream of a garden in the sky. Of course it had already been fulfilled. The seeds and embryos she had brought with her were already beginning to play a role in the life of this planet. But couldn’t the dream be more literal? Once the colony was fully established, couldn’t she take the ship back into the sky and orbit the Earth, studying ecosystems, developing variations and enhancements and hybrids of lifeforms from Harmony and Earth, coming down only now and then to take samples and measurements and to introduce new organisms into the world? Then she really would be the gardener of Earth, a whole planet to play with. I’d be good at it, she whispered to the Oversoul. Then I wouldn’t have to be part of the messiness here in the colony. I don’t want to have to care about rivalries and loyalties. I just want to learn, to change, to create, to transform. That’s what my talent is. I have no gift for getting along with humans. I’ve given you what you needed from me. Let me now have what I want.
<All right.>
Shedemei felt the anxiety and longing seep out of her. The Oversoul said it would be all right. Now she could sleep.
Oykib was grateful to be able to stand up at last, after crawling or duckwalking his way through seemingly endless low tunnels. He had hardly been able to pay attention to his surroundings, partly because the grays and browns of the rock and earthen walls hardly offered much in the way of scenery, but mostly because the diggers that surrounded them were all crying out to the gods, and so Oykib could hear the silent pleadings and psalms and paeans as if they were all singing in his ears. Still, despite the confusion of voices, Oykib was beginning to learn some words, some shapes and structures in the language. It became music to him first, so that he heard the rhythms and tunes that helped carry meanings and emotions. This must be what dogs hear in human speech, he thought. The music of our vokes tells them if we’re angry or happy, sad or frightened. That was as much of the language as Oykib understood, but he knew that soon he would understand more. He had never had to learn a second language before, so that until now he had never known how easy it was. He had a talent for it. Or perhaps it was simply easier to learn a language if you had some understanding of the speakers before trying to grasp their speech.
Now, standing in the temple chamber, the light from the cloak illuminating every corner, Oykib could take a moment to look at the diggers gathered around the walls of the room. Their origin as rats was unmistakable, but so was the fact that the thousands of generations between them and their ancestors had changed them far more than the humans of Basilica had changed. The snout and whiskers were still prominent, but much less so than in their ancestors, and the jaw had changed shape to allow for speech. Oykib was eager to discuss with Shedemei what ali the other structural changes were for.
“Oykib,” said Nafai.
That’s right, he had a job to do. A little embarrassed at having allowed himself to daydream at such a tense moment, he stepped up beside Nafai. “Yes?” he said.
But Nafai didn’t answer, just continued to stare at the statue that rested on a pedestal of tiny bones. It was a human head. But not just any human. The face was dearly Nafai’s own.
“When could they have done this?” asked Nafai.
Oykib tried to sort out the many prayers going on in the room, and gradually gleaned a little information. “They didn’t do it,” he said. “They don’t make their gods. The way they tell it, their gods make themselves. They’re praising you for having given them such a perfect copy of your head.”
“It is perfect,” said Nafai. “Perhaps a little younger.”
“Get this,” said Oykib. “The head is a hundred years old.”
“Impossible.”
“It was fifty years ago when the queen found this statue in that tiny secluded chamber that you-blessed, or whatever it was you were doing.”
“I hope I was blessing it,” said Nafai.
“And it was fifty years old then. Apparently her relationship with that statue was pivotal in her life. It’s because of you that she married the war king. Because you accepted her.”
“Are you sure you’re understanding this?” asked Nafai.
“Not at all,” said Oykib. “But it’s as clear as anything else I’ve understood. There’s plenty of time to figure this all out. But one thing’s sure. The head is older than any living digger. And they definitely claim they didn’t make it themselves, though how their clay gods could make themselves I can’t imagine. They point out how perfectly the features have been preserved. This is because they worshipped you differently from the other gods. They didn’t-this is kind of repulsive-they didn’t rub your head in order to breed.”
“So their other gods are involved in fertility worship.”
“The images I’m getting are pretty nasty,” said Oykib.
“Religion isn’t always pretty,” said Nafai. “Especially viewed from the outside, by an unbeliever. So they use the other statues as part of a mating ritual, but mine they left alone.”
“Because you were so ugly.” Oykib couldn’t keep a bit of laughter out of his voice.
“To them, I’m sure,” said Nafai. “Just imagine what they would have thought if it had been your head.”
“Babies would have run screaming from the cave, I’m sure.”
“So what do I do with this sculpture?”
“Invent a ritual, Nafai. You’ve been winging it pretty well so far.”
So Nafai sank to his knees before the statue and improvised a fairly simple and harmless sort of obeisance. When he was done, he got up and smiled at Oykib. “This is kind of embarrassing,” he said. “To have people worshipping me. Though there are those who’ll be bound to say that it’s what I’ve secretly longed for all my life.”
“So don’t tell them that you’re being worshipped.”
“I can’t conceal something like this. My face, carved a hundred years ago. Since I certainly did not sculpt it, someone did. And someone knew what I looked like.”
“The Keeper, obviously.”
“Yes, but don’t you understand? It means that the Keeper knew things about us here on Earth at a time when-well, when the information couldn’t possibly have traveled at lightspeed. At the speed of light, the Keeper would have to have seen my face almost eighty years before I was born in order to have this carved a hundred years ago.”
“So we don’t know everything about physics. Hardly a surprise, since the Oversoul was keeping human beings from learning a lot of science and technology.”
“But Oykib, I’ve always assumed that the Keeper was some kind of computer, like the Oversoul. The Over-soul was created by humanity at its technological peak, along with our starship. And at that time they knew nothing about faster-than-light communication.”
“So, somebody learned more.”
“Who, Oykib? The human beings were gone from Earth. Who built the Keeper, if he has powers far beyond what humanity was capable of creating at its peak?”
“Maybe the humans didn’t all leave,” said Oykib.
“Maybe,” said Nafai. “It’s a puzzle. In the meantime, I’d really like to get out of this dark, musty, dirty place. It must be near dawn by now, and I’m exhausted.”
“I wouldn’t mind a nap myself.”
“So how do I extricate myself? I have no clue how to get out of here.”
“Wing it,” said Oykib.
“I’m sure glad I have you along for wise counsel,” said Nafai dryly.
Dawn was breaking when Elemak’s party reached the place where the canyon became a shallow depression and finally just a part of the saddle of the first range of mountains. It had been slow climbing in the darkness, even with the lanterns. Perhaps especially with the lanterns. And it didn’t help that Mebbekew and Obring seemed to be in competition for the longest, vilest string of obscenities whenever they slipped or whenever a passage looked especially forbidding or ... whenever.
Zdorab hated listening to them. In fact, he realized now, he simply hated them, even when by chance they were silent. He hated the way they treated women. He hated the way they treated men. He hated the way they thought. He hated the way they didn’t think. It was hard to imagine which of them he hated more. On the one hand, Obring was inherently stupid and brutal. It wasn’t a decision he made. It was a chronic condition bordering on the continuous. On the other hand, Mebbekew was actually rather bright; he merely chose to be stupid. He seemed to take pleasure in cruelty, too, but unlike Obring, he didn’t care enough to seek out occasions for it. He simply took whatever opportunity to be stupid and cruel happened to come to hand. Which of them, then, was more detestable? The one who was loathsome by nature, or the one who wanted to be loathsome but hadn’t enough ambition to excel at it?
How did I come to be here this morning, Zdorab wondered, greeting dawn on a mountain range on Earth, in hot pursuit of a flying creature that left no trail and might not be anywhere near us? Why am I not asleep in a soft chair in a library in Basilica? Why am I now sharing such strenuous activity in the company of exactly the kind of men I most hated back in civilization? And, worse, taking orders from them?
Zdorab knew that most of the others were thinking similar thoughts. Well, not dreaming of soft beds in Basilica, The younger men had never seen the city-or any city, for that matter. Nevertheless, they were filled with resentment, knowing that there was no hope of accomplishing anything. Wherever these flying creatures lived, it would probably be very high. Out of reach. And if in fact they had taken Elemak’s daughter, how was this group of men going to save her? With their motley assortment of farming tools, what would they do? Hand over our little girl, you villains, or we’ll plant a garden!
At this little bit of whimsy Zdorab couldn’t help but smile. But at that moment he crested the rise to find Elemak glaring at him.
“What’s the smile about, Zdorab?”
“I was off in another world,” said Zdorab, ducking his head obsequiously. It was a posture he had learned long ago. It generally deflected the wrath of bullies. “I’m so sorry.”
“You shouldn’t be,” said Elemak. “Better any world than this.”
So he, too, resented it. As if he hadn’t been part of the cause of it, with his plotting and conniving back on Basilica.
But Zdorab said nothing more. Instead he turned and surveyed the terrain that dawn was revealing. At this altitude the air was noticeably cooler, and the undergrowth wasn’t quite as thick. A thin mist had formed in the valley behind the saddle, like a river flowing among the trees. The next row of peaks was astonishing in its craggy beauty, and behind that he could see the very tops of a couple of mountains so high that even at these latitudes they had snow. It had snowed several times during the years he lived in Basilica, but it was never more than an inch or two on the ground, and it always melted within a day. But the snow must never melt up there. What had Shedemei said? Mountains so new and high that it was a miracle the mantle of Earth could sustain the weight of them. Eleven thousand meters. The Oversold said that there were no mountains so high on Harmony, and as far as his records showed there had never been such high mountains on Earth before, either. These were new, pushed up by an ocean plate being subducted under what had once been a narrow isthmus connecting two continents. Now it was a great massif, the highest spot on Earth, and every climate and terrain existed on its perimeter. On the western coast the mountains were so high their rain shadow caused an utter desert. On the east, there was a place where rain fell almost continuously, day and night, summer and winter, so that it was bare rock, except for a few hardy mosses that could live with perpetual cloud cover.
Why can’t Shedemei and I leave this village, simply explore this new planet? They don’t need us. We don’t want to be with them. Our son and daughter are grown up and married now. It would be nice to visit with them from time to time, but parenting they don’t need. When they have children, I can sing them silly songs and dandle them on my knee. Twice a year.
But thinking of little children made him remember why they were there. Why they had spent tonight with no sleep, climbing a canyon in the dark. And now he looked out over the valley and saw that in the first light of dawn, the trees were jumping with life. Flying creatures bounding into the air, flying a short distance, and then dropping back down into the leaves. Each of them seemed to be carrying something in its feet as it flew.
“They’re terrified of us,” said Elemak softly.
“How can you tell that?” asked Mebbekew.
“Because they’re evacuating their village. Look- those are their own children they’re carrying.”
“Look,” said Zdorab. “When the children are a little larger, it takes two adults to carry them.”
“Good eyes,” said Elemak. “It took four of them to lift Zhivya. And if they think they can get away from me by carrying their children to-“
“They can” said Vas scornfully. “They can get away from us any time they want, precisely by carrying their children to safety. What are you going to do, dance along the treetops till you catch up with them?”
Elemak turned slowly. “Go back down the mountain, then, if you don’t care about this errand.”
Vas immediately apologized. “I’m tired, Elemak. I’m too tired to know what I’m saying.”
“Then keep your mouth shut,” said Elemak. “And your eyes open.”
Zdorab sighed and turned away from this touching scene of true friendship. The only people who hated Elemak worse than his enemies were his friends. And yet they followed him, because they knew he needed them so much he couldn’t ignore them, as Nafai certainly would have. That’s probably how a lot of vile men get others to follow them, thought Zdorab. They can’t get good men to follow them, and they need somebody, so they have to take the kind of men who can’t find a good man interested in taking them on. The miracle was that evil persisted in the world, since the only people who took part in it generally couldn’t stand each other, and for good reason.
Zdorab’s attention was caught by a movement in a tree just down from the crest. A single bat-thing was sitting on a branch. “Look,” said Zdorab.
“I see him,” said Elemak.
“What’s he doing?” asked Yasai.
“We all have the same number of eyes,” said Elemak scornfully. “Watch and we’ll see together.”
The angel abruptly dropped from the tree, fluttering down to the ground in a small clearing that led up to where the humans stood. Zdorab got a chance to see it clearly then, its wings extended. The face was hideously ugly, but that was hardly a surprise. After all, it had descended from some wizen-snouted species of bat, hadn’t it? The real surprise was the fascinating compromise that evolution had reached. Its arms and legs were almost mockingly thin. From wrist to ankle on each side of his body, the wings fanned out, held rigid by two distorted fingers of each hand. The other three fingers on each side, however, were of normal size, giving the creature good hands for grasping. And the head was very large for the size of the body. The miracle was that it could fly at all. It was surely at the outside limit of its growth-any larger, and it would lose the power of flight.
At this moment, however, it was walking toward diem. It wasn’t without grace when it walked, but it was dear that it was more at ease on branches or in the air. A long-distance hiker it would never be, not on those feet.
Those feet.
Zdorab knew enough to hold his tongue. Young Yasai, alas, did not. “Oykib was right,” he blurted out. “No way did those feet make those footprints back in the village.”
Elemak turned slowly toward him. “So maybe it wasn’t this thing that made the prints. Do you think I didn’t know that was a possibility? The fact remains that this fellow was the lookout for the kidnappers. If he doesn’t have Zhivya, he knows where she is.” Elemak took a step downward, toward the creature.
Almost at once, the creature stopped, and then did the most extraordinary thing. He reached down and took from his foot a small number of stalks of grain that he had been holding. Then he laid them down in the grass, making a great show of each one, as if counting them out. When they were all laid out, the creature took a step backward.
“That’s grain from our field,” said Obring.
“Did you just realize that?” asked Vas,
“Does it matter?” asked Meb.
“He thinks that’s why we came up here,” said Padarok, Zdorab’s own son. “Because he stole our grain. He’s giving it back.”
“And when did you become an expert on overgrown bats?” asked Elemak.
“It makes sense,” said Padarok stubbornly.
Zdorab waved a hand at him, trying to get him to shut up.
“No, I won’t shut up, Father. This whole thing is ludicrous. The angel took some grain from the field and he doesn’t know a thing about Zhivya. If somebody had stopped to give this any thought at all, we wouldn’t have spent all night climbing a mountain in pursuit of an innocent man.”
Elemak’s hands snapped out and seized Padarok by the head. Like his father, Padarok had not grown into a very tall man, and he was slight of build. He looked like a puppet in Elemak’s massive grasp. “Man?” Elemak demanded. “You call that thing a man?”
“Figure of speech,” Padarok murmured.
“That man, as you call him, knows where my daughter is!” With those words Elemak shook Padarok. His whole body went limp. For a moment Zdorab feared that the shaking had done brain damage, had perhaps even killed him. And even though Padarok’s eyes immediately fluttered open and he moved his limbs, the hot rage that surged inside Zdorab did not fade. To his own surprised, Zdorab found himself in the odd position of holding a scythe over Elemak’s shoulders and neck, say-ing to him the most unbelievable words. “Let go of my son,” he said. “Now.”
Elemak turned slowly and regarded Zdorab with lizard eyes. “And if I don’t, will you cut off my arms?”
“Only if I miss your neck,” said Zdorab.
Elemak let go of Padarok. “Don’t threaten me, Zdorab. Even if you’ve forgotten who our enemy is, I haven’t.” With a quick movement Elemak snatched the scythe out of Zdorab’s hands, so quickly that Zdorab could barely register that it had happened. For a moment Elemak stood there, the scythe poised, and Zdorab wasn’t sure whether Elemak meant to strike him or his son. But then he cast the scythe to the ground and strode to where the creature waited.
The poor thing visibly wilted under the head of Elemak’s fierce glare, but it stood its ground. Elemak reached out a foot and ground the stalks of grain into the muddy grass, “I don’t care about the grain,” he said. Then he reached down and snatched the creature up by one arm. “Where’s my daughter!” he bellowed.
“What language do you expect him to answer in?” said Padarok scornfully. “Or should he draw you a map in midair?”
Please, don’t goad him, don’t provoke him, Rokya; Zdorab thought the words but didn’t say them. Because he was also proud. He had spent his life bowing to men like this, so they wouldn’t hurt him. But his son did not bow. He might have inherited my height, thought Zdorab, but he has his mother’s spine.
Elemak’s answer was to roar in rage, and as he did, he snapped the creature like a whip. Zdorab saw, to his horror, that in Elemak’s grip the poor thing was like a brittle stick. He could see its arm break on both sides of Elemak’s grip, and at the same time both wings tore and began to bleed, while every joint seemed to have bent the wrong way and now could not get back. The creature screamed once and then fell silent, hanging limp and broken in Elemak’s hands.
“My my my,” said Meb. “Fellow doesn’t know his own strength sometimes.”
“Good work,” said Padarok. “Now that he’s dead, he’ll make a great guide.”
Elemak hurled the broken animal away from him. It struck the trunk of a tree and stuck there for a moment, then dropped lifelessly to the ground. “Where is my daughter!” Elemak shouted. “They’ve taken my daughter!”
His rage was so terrible that they all backed away from him, just a step, but it made their fear plain. Except Padarok. He didn’t back away.
And that meant that he would be the one to bear the brunt of Elemak’s helpless fury. Already Elemak was glaring at him.
So, again without thinking, Zdorab stepped forward. “We’re going back down now, Elemak. We all tried. But there’s no way we can find her, if she’s up here. If breaking and killing a helpless little creature will make you feel better, then you’ve done it. You don’t have to kill or break anything else.”
He could see Elemak visibly pull himself back under control.
“I’ll never forgive you for saying that,” Elemak said.
“There’s not a soul here that you haven’t promised, one time or another, never to forgive,” said Zdorab. “But we forgive you, Elemak. We all have children. It could have been any one of us. If we could bring her back to you, we would.”
“If you could bring her back to me,” said Elemak, “I would be your willing servant forever.” Then he stalked off, over the saddle, and down into the canyon.
Obring and Meb followed him immediately, but both paused as they passed Zdorab. “Who would have thought the little pizdoon had some spunk in him after all,” Obring said, laughing derisively.
“You keep this up,” said Meb, “and someday, who knows? You might actually get a hard-on. Then you’ll be half a man.” He patted Zdorab on the head and followed Obring and Elemak down.
Padarok came to Zdorab and hugged him. “Thank you, Father. I thought he was going to break my neck.”
“We saw what he wanted to do to you, Rokya,” said Zdorab, “because he did it to the angel.”
Then, from down by the tree where Elemak had flung the poor creature, Yasai called out. “He’s not dead!”
“Then maybe we should kill it to put it out of its misery,” suggested Zhatva, Nafai’s eldest son. They all gathered around the creature.
“This isn’t a dog,” said Yasai. “Oykib said he was sentient. A person, not a beast. Shedemei will be able to heal him if it can be done at all.”
The creature kept slowly blinking one eye.
“Are you sure that’s not a reflex?” asked Xodhya.
Yasai was peeling off his shirt. “Help me lift him onto this,” he said. “Without breaking his neck.”
“It’s already broken,” said Motiga helpfully.
“But maybe the spinal column isn’t severed.” Then Yasai whistled in surprise. “He’s so light.”
“It hurts him,” said Vas. “He’s closing his eyes in pain.”
“But not complaining,” said Zdorab. “He bears his suffering well.”
“Yeah, a real man,” said Zhatva. But there was little mockery in his voice. The creature was to be admired.
“What if Elemak sees that we’re carrying him?” asked Motya.
“I hope he does,” said Padarok. “This creature wasn’t threatening him in any way, and look what he did. Even if it had been a dog. . . .”
He didn’t have to finish his sentence. Four of them took up the four corners of the shirt. The others carried their lanterns, and they began the slow journey down the canyon.
Eiadh heard the glad shouting of the children and knew that Elemak and the men who were with him had finally come back down from their night’s search. No doubt Elya would be exhausted and a bit frustrated that his search was in vain. But when he saw Zhivya, that would make up for everything.
Zhivya, perhaps worn out from yesterday’s excitement, was taking a late morning nap. Eiadh picked her up carefully; the baby stirred but did not wake. Eiadh’s one worry now was that she might remember something from the experience. She was old enough to toddle around now, but surely not old enough for memories to linger. There should be no nightmares of diggers looming over her crib or of journeys through long dark tunnels. There was nothing to worry about now.
Zhivya woke up as Eiadh carried her along toward the village’s edge. There was Elemak, tall and strong- for all his flaws, a fine man, a powerful figure. Eiadh remembered again why she had fallen in love with him, back when she was a foolish shallow girl in Basilica. True, he had proven not to have the self-control and the selflessness that she admired in some of the other men, and his temper meant that she and the children had to tread carefully at home. But he was her husband, and she wasn’t unhappy about that. Not today, not with their daughter rescued from the monsters of the underground.
As she approached, she could see that Volemak was telling him what had happened; as they spoke, Volemak cast his gaze toward her, and Elemak looked also, seeing that she had the baby. Elemak smiled at her. It could have been a bit more enthusiastic, but he was tired.
Suddenly there was a flurry of activity. Yasai, Rokya, Xodhya, and Zhyat were carrying something in a shirt-Yasai’s, no doubt, since he was barechested. Volemak directed them toward the ship, where Shedemei was studying the digger hostages. What was it? They hadn’t harmed one of the angels, had they?
As soon as she thought of it, she knew it was true. Volemak was remonstrating with Elemak, and now Eiadh was near enough and their voices were loud enough for her to hear.
“But he was unarmed?” Volemak was saying. “He didn’t threaten you at all?”
“I told you that I thought he knew where my daughter was!”
“So you crippled him? Even if you didn’t care that we have to live in this place and you have needlessly made enemies of a tribe of sentient creatures, you might have thought that brutalizing the one person who might have helped you was beyond stupidity!”
Volemak was too angry, Eiadh thought. Elemak didn’t respond well to tongue-lashings, especially in public. He had been faithful to the oath of obedience, but why push it?
Of course, she hadn’t seen the injured angel, and Volemak had. What had Elemak done?
“Oh, yes, I’m beyond stupid,” Elemak was answering. “But your perfect hero with the magic cloak was down playing god with a bunch of rats!”
“He got your daughter back, he and Oykib and Protchnu and I,” said Volemak. “And we did it surrounded by armed diggers that outnumbered us by hundreds, because you had insisted on taking all but a handful of our men of fighting age.”
“If you had commanded me to leave some behind,” Elemak began, but Volemak cut him off.
“Oh, yes, you would have obeyed-while you accused me of wanting your daughter to die. Well, Elya, she lived, no thanks to you. Now let’s see if that harmless angel is as lucky.”
“What am I supposed to do, kneel down and worship at Nafai’s feet? Is he supposed to be my god, too?”
That was too much for Eiadh. “You might thank him,” said Eiadh quietly. “He gave us back Zhivya.”
“No he didn’t,” said Elemak. “The cloak of the starmaster did whatever was done. If I had had the cloak, I could have done at least as well.”
“No you wouldn’t,” said Eiadh. “Because you would have been up the canyon with the cloak, no doubt using it to shoot angels out of the sky, and down here without it we would have been overrun and slaughtered by the diggers, every one of us.”
“How should I have known that some creatures we’d never seen before took the baby?”
“Oykib tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t listen. It’s one reason you aren’t fit to lead us. You never listen, you just decide based on what you already know. Well, Elemak, you don’t know everything.” Eiadh heard her own words and knew she was saying too much. The rage in his face was frightening. He hadn’t looked at her like that since . . . since she took Volemak’s oath during the voyage.
“So this is my greeting from my wife when I come home,” he said.
“I meant to greet you with joy,” said Eiadh, bowing her head. “I’m sorry.”
Because she had submitted, Elemak could turn his anger to others. “So I was wrong,” he said. “I didn’t hear any of you arguing with me!”
They answered him with silence.
“So don’t go criticizing me if you haven’t the brains to come up with a better idea.”
“We all had a better idea,” said Padarok quietly. “We all knew that you were wrong. We knew it from the beginning.”
His words were like a slap in Elemak’s face. “Then why did you follow me?”
“It was your daughter who was missing,” said Padarok.
“That didn’t mean that I was right? said Elemak. “It probably meant my judgment wasn’t at its best.”
“Yes, that’s what I was saying,” said Padarok.
“You followed me because my judgment wasn’t good?” asked Elemak. “You all knew I was wrong, and you followed me because I was wrong?” The contempt in his voice made a poor disguise for the confusion he was obviously feeling.
“Elemak, come inside, come to the house,” Eiadh said.
“No, I want to understand this,” said Elemak. “I want to understand why these so-called men are so stupid that they knowingly follow someone that they think is wrong.”
“Please, Elemak.”
“We didn’t follow you because you were wrong,” Yasai finally said. “We followed you because you were irrational. We didn’t know what you’d do if we refused to obey.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Elemak. “What mattered was finding my daughter. That’s all that mattered.”
“Was it?” asked Eiadh. “If that was true, you would have stopped and listened to Oykib when he tried to tell you that it wasn’t the angels who took Zhivya. Now please, stop arguing about it. Everybody’s home safe and nobody was harmed.”
Elemak shrugged off the hand she had laid upon his arm. “Don’t patronize me, Eiadh.”
“Don’t be angry, Elemak,” she said. “Zhivya was lost, and she’s been restored to us. It’s a day for rejoicing, not anger. You might even thank the ones who brought her back to us.”
“Thank them? Because the Oversoul gave Nafai the only good weapon? Because they followed me on a foolish chase up the canyon because they knew it was foolish?”
Padarok stepped closer to Elemak. “No, Elemak. We followed you because we were afraid that you would do to one of us what you finally ended up doing to that harmless angel. And our fear was not unfounded. If you’ll remember, you came very close to doing it to me?
Only now did Eiadh notice the bruises on Padarok’s neck and jaws.
“If Father hadn’t stood against you,” said Padarok.
Elemak, his face red with rage-or was it shame?- answered contemptuously, “Do you think I stopped because of Us pathetic threats?”
“I don’t know why you stopped,” said Padarok. “But we never know whether you will stop. And so we obey you when you’re angry and irrational, because we’re afraid of you. And if you think about it without letting rage cloud your reason, you’ll realize that we have cause to be afraid.”
“Let’s go home, Elya,” said Eiadh again.
But Elemak was determined to have this out. “You would have let Zhivya die, because you were so afraid of me that you didn’t dare to argue with me?”
Paradok shook his head. “We knew that Nafai would get her back, if it could be done at all.”
“Nafai?” said Elemak. Then he roared. “Nafai! Nafai! Nafai! You trusted him to do it! You put my daughter’s life in his hands! What does he know, that stupid, boastful boy, that snot-nosed little pretender, that-“
“He did it!” Eiadh screamed at him. “You stupid angry fool, he did save her, so they were right to trust him!” Her screaming frightened the baby, who started to cry. But Eiadh couldn’t stop now. “And they knew that if you stayed here, you’d just do some angry stupid thing and cause a disaster, so it was better to have you off up the canyon where you wouldn’t start a war between us and the diggers. Do you get it now, Elemak? Now that you’ve made us tell you more than we ever meant to, will you finally understand what you Are to us? We know that if anything delicate needs to be done, yauV belter not be there, because you’ll always, always, always do something like what you did to that angel!”
For a moment Eiadh felt the thrill of having finally blurted out the truth, of having struck down the pride-ful man who had complicated her life so much for all these years.
Then she saw something she had never seen before. Elemak didn’t rage. His shoulders slumped. He visibly wilted. He looked at no one, met no one’s gaze. He just turned his back and walked into the forest.
“I’m sorry, Elya,” she called after him. “I was angry, I didn’t mean it.”
But he knew she meant it. Everyone knew she meant it, and everyone knew that what she had said was true.
Everyone had known it for years. Finally, today, Elemak knew it too.
He came back the next day. Quiet, subdued. A different man. A broken man. Eiadh tried to apologize to him when they were alone in the house, but he walked out the door and wouldn’t listen. They shared their bed, but he never reached out to her. He would answer the children when they asked him questions, and sometimes he would play with them and laugh and smile like the old days. But he didn’t come to any of the meetings of the adults, and when Eiadh tried to involve him in decisions about their own household, he always answered the same way. “Whatever you want,” he said. “I don’t care.”
And he didn’t care, or so it seemed. He did his work in the fields, but he no longer had any ideas about what others should do. He simply did what he was asked. He worked hard. He exhausted himself, in fact. But he still seemed invisible.
I killed him, thought Eiadh.
Or maybe, just maybe, I took the first step toward healing him.
She would cling to that hope, she decided. This puzzling, quiet, withdrawn personality was just a stage in his development into a mature, wise, self-restrained, good man.
A man like Nafai.