The Call of Earth

by Orson Scott Card

  Luet pulled a gown over her head, slipped sandals on her feet, and followed Hushidh down the stairs to the kitchen. "I dreamed of angels, flying."

  "Angels! And what is that supposed to mean, except that you're superstitious in your sleep?"

  "They didn't look like the pictures in the children's books, if that's what you mean. No, they were more like large and graceful birds. Bats, really, since they had fur. But with very intelligent and expressive faces, and somehow in the dream I knew they were angels."

  "The Oversoul has no need of angels. The Oversoul speaks directly to the mind of every woman."

  "And man, only hardly anybody listens anymore, just as you're not listening to me, Shuya. Should I tell you the dream or just eat bread and honey and cream and figure that the Oversoul has nothing to say that might interest you?"

  "Don't be nasty with me, Luet. You may be this wonderful waterseer to everybody else, but you're just my stupid little sister when you get snippy like this."

  The cook glared at them. "I try to keep a kitchen full of light and harmony" she said.

  Abashed, they took the hot bread she offered them and sat at the table, where a pitcher of cream and a jar of honey already waited. Hushidh, as always, broke her bread into a bowl and poured the cream and honey on it; Luet, as always, slathered the honey on the bread and ate it separately, drinking the plain cream from her bowl. They both pretended to detest the way the other ate her food. "Dry as dust," whispered Hushidh. "Soggy and slimy," answered Luet. Then they both laughed aloud.

  "Much better," said the cook. "You should both know better than to quarrel."

  With her mouth full, Hushidh said, "The dream."

  "Angels," said Luet.

  "Flying, yes. Hairy ones, like fat bats. I heard you the first time."

  "Not fat."

  "Bats, anyway."

  "Graceful," said Luet. "Soaring, that's how they were. And then I was one of them, flying and flying. It was so beautiful and peaceful. And then I saw the river, and I flew down to it and there on the riverbank I took the clay and made a statue out of it."

  "Angels playing in the mud?"

  "No stranger than bats making statues," Luet retorted. "And there's milk slobbering down your chin."

  "Well, there's honey on the tip of your nose."

  "Well, there's a big ugly growth on the front of you head-oh, no, that's your-"

  "My face, I know. Finish the dream."

  "I made the clay soft by putting it in my mouth, so that when I-as an angel, you understand-when I made the statue it contained something of me in it. I think that's very significant."

  "Oh, quite symbolic, yes." Hushidh's tone was playful, but Luet knew she was listening carefully.

  "And the statues weren't of people or angels or anything else. There were faces on them sometimes, but they weren't portraits or even things. The statues just took the shape that we needed them to take. No two of them were alike, yet I knew that at this moment, the statue I was making was the only possible statue I could make. Does that make sense?"

  "It's a dream, it doesn't have to."

  "But if it's a true dream, then it must make sense."

  "Eventually, anyway," said Hushidh. Then she lifted another gloppy spoonful of bread and milk to her mouth.

  "When we were done," said Luet, "we took them to a high rock and put them in the sun to dry, and then we flew around and around, and everyone looked at each other's statues. Then the angels flew off and now I wasn't with them anymore, I wasn't an angel, I was just there, watching the rocks where the statues stood, and the sun went down and in the dark-"

  "You could see in the dark?"

  "I could in my dream" said Luet. "Anyway, in the nighttime these giant rats came, and each one took one of the statues and carried it down, into holes in the ground, all the way to deep warrens and burrows, and each rat that had stolen a statue gave it to another rat and then together they gnawed at it, wet it down with their spit and rubbed it all over themselves. Covered themselves with the clay. I was so angry, Hushidh. These beautiful statues, and they wrecked them, turned them back into mud and rubbed it-even into their private parts, everywhere"

  "Lovers of beauty," said Hushidh.

  "I'm serious. It broke my heart."

  "So what does it mean?" asked Hushidh. "Who do the angels represent, and who are the rats?"

  "I don't know. Usually the meaning is obvious, when the Oversoul sends a dream."

  "So maybe it was just a dream."

  "I don't think so. It was so different and so dear, and I remember it so forcefully. Shuya, I think it's perhaps the most important dream I've ever had."

  "Too bad nobody can understand it. Maybe it's one of those prophecies that everybody understands after it's all over and it's too late to do anything about it."

  "Maybe Aunt Rasa can interpret it."

  Hushidh made a skeptical face. "She's not at her best at the moment."

  Secretly Luet was relieved that she wasn't the only one to notice that Rasa wasn't making the best decisions of her life right now. "So maybe I won't tell her, then."

  Suddenly Hushidh smiled her tight little smile that showed she was really pleased with herself. "You want to hear a wild guess?" she said.

  Luet nodded, then began taking huge bites of her long-ignored bread as she listened.

  "The angels are the women of Basilica," said Hushidh. "All these millennia here in this city, we've shaped a society that is delicate and fine, and we've made it out of a part of ourselves, the way the bats in your dream made their statues out of spit. And now we've put our works to dry, and in the darkness our enemies are going to come and steal what we've made. But they're so stupid they don't even understand that they're statues. They look at them and all they see are blobs of dried mud. So they wet it down and wallow in it and they're so proud because they've got all the works of Basilica, but in feet they have nothing of Basilica at all."

  "That's very good," said Luet, in awe.

  "I think so, too," said Hushidh.

  "So who are our enemies?"

  "It's simple," said Hushidh. "Men are."

  "Not, that's too simple," said Luet. "Even though this is a city of women, the men who enter Basilica contribute as much as the women do to the works of beauty we make. They're part of the community, even if they can't own land or stay inside the walls without being married to a woman."

  "I was sure it meant men the moment you said they were giant rats."

  The cook chortled over the stew she was making for dinner.

  "Someone else," insisted Luet. "Maybe Potokgavan."

  "Maybe just Gaballufix's men," said Hushidh. "The tolchoks, and then his soldiers in those horrible masks."

  "Or maybe something yet to come," said Luet. And then, in despair. "Or maybe nothing to do with Basilica at all. Who can tell? But that was my dream."

  "It doesn't exactly tell us where we should have sent Smelost."

  Luet shrugged. "Maybe the Oversoul thought we had brains enough to figure that out on our own."

  "Was she right?" asked Hushidh.

  "I doubt it," said Luet. "Sending him to the Gorayni was a mistake."

  "I wouldn't know," said Hushidh. "Eating your bread dry-now that's a mistake."

  "Not for those of us who have teeth," said Luet. "We don't have to sog our bread to make it edible."

  Which led to a mock argument that got silly and loud enough that the cook threw them out of the kitchen, which was fine because they were finished with breakfast anyway. It felt good, for just a few minutes, to play together like children. For they knew that, for good or ill, they would both be involved in the events that were swirling in and near Basilica. Not that they wanted to be involved, really. But their gifts made them important to the city, and so they would do their best to serve.

  Luet dutifully went to the city council and told her dream, which was carefully recorded and handed over to the wise women to be studied for meanings and portents. Luet told them how
Hushidh had interpreted it, and they thanked her kindly and as much as told her that having dreams was fine-any idiot child could do that- but it took a real expert to figure out what they meant.

  IN KHLAM, AND NOT IN A DREAM

  It was a hot dry storm from the northwest, which meant it came across the desert, not a breath of moisture in it, just sand and grit and, so they said, the ground-up bones of men and animals that had got caught in the storm a thousand kilometers away, the dust of their flesh, and, if you listened closely, the howling of their souls as the wind bore them on and on, never letting go of them, either to heaven or to hell. The mountains blocked the worst of the storm, but still the tents of Moozh's army shuddered and staggered, the flaps of the tents snapped, the banners danced crazily, and now and then one of them would whip away from the ground and tumble, pole and all, along a dirty trampled avenue between the tents, some poor soldier often trying to chase it down.

  Moozh's large tent also shuddered in the wind, despite its blessing from the Imperator. Of course the blessing was completely efficacious... but Moozh also made sure the stakes were pounded in hard and deep. He sat at the table by candlelight, gazing wistfully at the map spread out before him. It showed all the lands along the western shores of the Earthbound Sea. In the north, the lands of the Gorayni were outlined in red, the lands of the Imperator, who was of course the incarnation of God on Earth and therefore entitled to rule over all mankind, etc. etc. In his mind's eye Moozh traced the unmarked boundaries of nations that were at least as old as the Gorayni, and some of them much older, with proud histories-nations that now did not exist, that could not even be remembered, because to speak their names was treason, and to reach out and trace their old boundary on this map would be death.

  But Moozh did not have to trace the boundary. He knew the borders of his homeland of Pravo Gollossa, the land of the Sotchitsiya, his own tribe. They had come across the desert from the north a thousand years before the Gorayni, but once they had been of the same stock, with the same language. But in the lush well-watered valleys of the Skrezhet Mountains the Sotchitsiya had settled down, had ceased both wandering and war, and become a nation of free men. They learned from the people around them. Not the Ploshudu or the Khlami or the Izmennikoy, for they were tough mountain people with no culture but hunger and muscle and a will to live despite all. Rather the Sotchitsiya, the people of Pravo Gollossa, had learned from the traders who came to them from Seggidugu, from Ulye, from the Cities of the Plain. And above all the caravanners from Basilica, with their strange songs and seeds, images in glass and cunning tools, impossible fabrics that changed colors with the hours of the day, and their poems and stories that taught the Sotchitsiya how wise and refined men and women spoke and thought and dreamed and lived.

  That was the glory of Pravo Gollossa, for it was from these caravanners that they learned of the idea of a council, with decisions made by the vote of the councilors who had themselves been chosen by the voice of the citizens. But it was also from these Basilican caravanners that they learned of a city ruled by women, where men could not even own land... and yet the city did not collapse from the incompetence of women to rule, and the men did not rebel and conquer the city, and women were able not only to vote but also to divorce their husbands at the end of every year and marry someone else if they chose. The constant pressure of those ideas wore down the Sotchitsiya and turned the once-strong warriors and rulers of the tribe into woman-hearted fools, so that in Moozh's great-grandfather's day they gave the vote to women, and elected women to rule over them.

  That was when the Gorayni came, for they knew that the Sotchitsiya had at last become women in their hearts, and so were no longer worthy to be free. The Gorayni brought their great army to the border, and the women of the council-as many males as females, but all women nonetheless-voted not to fight, but rather to accept Gorayni overlordship if the Gorayni would allow them to rule themselves in all but military matters. It was an unspeakable surrender, the final castration of the Sotchitsiya, their humiliation before all the world, and Moozh's own great-grandfather was the delegate who worked out the terms of their surrender with the Gorayni.

  For fifty years the agreement stood-the Sotchitsiya governed themselves. But gradually the Gorayni military began to declare more of Sotchitsiya affairs to be military matters, until finally the council was nothing but a bunch of frightened old men and women who had to petition the Imperator for permission to pee. Only then did any of the Sotchitsiya remember their manhood. They threw out the women who ruled them and declared themselves to be a tribe agaia, desert wanderers again, and swore to fight the Gorayni to the last man. It took three days for the Gorayni to defeat these brave but untrained rebels on the battlefield, and another year to hunt them down and kill them all in the mountains. After that there was no pretense that the Sotchitsiya had any rights at all. It was forbidden to speak the Sotchitsiya dialect; children who were heard speaking it had the privilege of watching their parents' tongues cut off, one centimeter for each offense. Only a few of the Sotchitsiya remembered their own language anymore, most of them old and many of them tongueless.

  But Moozh knew. Moozh had the Sotchitsiya language in his heart. Even though he was the most successful, the most dangerous of the Imperator's generals, in his heart he knew his true language was Sotchitsiya, not Gorayni. And even though his many victories in battle had brought the great coastal nations of Uslavat and Ulye under the Imperator's dominion, even though his clever strategy had brought the thorny mountain kingdoms of Plosh and Khlam to obedience without a single pitched battle, Moozh's secret was that he loathed the Imperator and defied him in his heart.

  For Moozh knew that the Imperator truly was God in the flesh, for better than most, Moozh could feel the power of God trying to control him. He had felt it first in his youth, when he sought a place in the Gorayni army. God didn't speak to him when he learned to be a strong soldier, his arms and thighs heavy with muscle, able a drive a battleaxe through the spine of his enemy and cleave him in half. But when Moozh imagined himself as an officer, as a general, leading armies, then came that heavy stupid feeling that made him want to forget such dreams. Moozh understood-God knew his hatred of the Imperator, and so was determined that one like Moozh would never have power beyond the strength of his arms.

  But Moozh refused to capitulate. Whenever he sensed that God was making him forget an idea, he clung to it-he wrote it down and memorized it, he made a poem of it in the Sotchitsiya language so he could never forget. And thus, bit by bit, he built up in his heart his own rules of warfare, guided every step of the way by God, for whatever God tried to prevent him from thinking, that was what he knew that he must think of, deeply and well.

  This secret defiance of God was what brought Moozh out of the ranks and made him a captain when his regiment was in danger of being overrun by the pirates of Revis. All the other officers had been killed, yet when Moozh thought of taking command and leading the few men near him in a counterattack against the flank of the uncontrolled, victorious Reviti, he felt that dullness of mind that always told him that God did not want him to pursue the idea. So he shouted down the voice of God and led his men in a foolhardy charge, which so terrified the pirates that they broke and ran, and the rest of the Gorayni took heart and followed Moozh in hot pursuit of them until they caught them on the riverbank and killed them all and burned their ships. They had brought Moozh for a triumph of the city of Gollod itself, where the Imperator had rubbed the camelmilk butter into his hair and declared him a hero of the Gorayni. But in his heart, Moozh knew that God had no doubt planned to have some loyal son of the Gorayni achieve the victory. Well, too bad for the Imperator-if the incarnation of God didn't understand that he had just oiled the hair of his enemy, then so much the worse for him.

  Step by step Moozh had risen in command, until now he was at the head of a vast army. Most of his men were quartered in Ulye now, it was true, for the Imperator had commanded that they delay the attack against Nakaval
nu until calm weather a month from now, when the chariots could be used to good advantage. Here in Khlam he had only a regiment, but that was all that was needed. Step by step he would lead the Gorayni onward, taking nation after nation along the coast until all the cities had fallen. Then he would face the armies of Potokgavan.

  And then what? Some days Moozh thought that he would take his vengeance by orchestrating a complete and utter defeat for the armies of the Gorayni. He would gather all their military might into one place and then contrive to have them all slaughtered, himself among them. Then, with the Gorayni broken and Potokgavan having their will throughout the plain- then the Sotchitsiya would rise up and claim their freedom.

  On other days, though, Moozh imagined that he would destroy the army of Potokgavan, so that along the entire western coast of the Earthbound Sea there was no rival to contest the supremacy of the Gorayni. Then he would stand before the Imperator, and when the Imperator reached out to smear the camelmilk butter on his hair, Moozh would slice off his head with a buck knife, then take the camelhump cap and put it on his own head, and declare that the empire that had been won by a Sotchitsiya would now be ruled by the Sotchitsiya. He would be Imperator, and instead of being the incarnation of God he would be the enemy of God, and the Sotchitsiya would be known as the greatest of men, and no longer as a nation of women.

  These were his thoughts as he studied the map, while the storm flung sand at his tent and tried to tear it out of the ground.

  Suddenly he came alert. The sound had changed. It wasn't just the wind; someone was scratching at his tent. Who would be so stupid as to walk about in this weather? He felt a sudden stab of fear-could it be the assassin sent by the Imperator, to prevent him from the treachery that God surely knew was in his heart?

  But when he untied the flap and opened it, no assassin came in with a flurry of sand and hot wind. Instead it was Plod, his dear friend and comrade in arms, and another man, a stranger, in military garb that Moozh did not recognize.