The Worthing Saga

by Orson Scott Card

  No one looked at Justice's blue, blue eyes, but everyone saw them.

  “So they held their peace, and on the fourth night John Tinker came back, frozen from wandering in the storm, weary and silent. He came in and said nothing to them. And they said nothing to him. They just beat him until he fell, and then kicked him until he died, because they had no use for a god who couldn't save them from everything. Little ”Amos watched John Tinker die, and as he grew up and found strange powers within himself, like the power to heal and the power to hear and see through other people's ears and eyes and the power to remember things that had never happened in his life, Amos kept these powers to himself, and did not use them to help others, even when he knew he could. But he also did not use his powers to get revenge for John Tinker's death. He had seen the villagers' memory of John Tinker's death, and he did not know which was worse, their fear before they killed him, or their shame when he was dead. He did not want to remember either of those feelings as his own, and so he went away to another city, and never saw Worthing again. The end.

  Sala broke from her trance. “Did you like my story?” she asked.

  “Yes,” said everyone, because she was a child, and people lie to children to make them feel better.

  Except the tinker. “I don't like stories where tinkers die,” he said. “That was a joke,” he said. Still no one laughed.

  That night, when everyone was asleep, Lared lay awake, bundled in blankets in his bed near the fire. He had rested so much these last few days that he could not sleep. He got up and climbed weakly up the stairs, and found Jason and Justice sitting awake in Jason's room, with a candle for light. He had thought to have to wake them. Why were they still up?

  “Did you know I was coming?” Lared asked.

  Jason shook his head.

  “Why did you tell the tale to Sala?” asked Lared. “It's from after. It's from a time when Jason's descendants were getting much stronger than he was. It must have been hundreds of years.”

  “Three thousand years,” said Jason.

  “Which of you remembers it?” asked Lared. “Were you still there, Jason?”

  “I was under somec, in my ship, at the bottom of the ocean.”

  “So it was you,” Lared said to Justice. “You were there.”

  “She wasn't born for thousands of years after John Tinker died,” said Jason. “But there's an unbroken chain. Every child at some point dares to penetrate his parents' memories. So generation after generation, some of the memories survive—the ones that each generation has found important enough to keep. It's not a purposeful choice—they just forgot what doesn't matter to them. I found the memory of John Tinker in Justice's mind. I've even looked back to try to find a memory of me.” Jason laughed. “I suppose it's because my children only knew me for a little while, and what they found in my memory made no sense to them, I guess. I'm not there. I search for the oldest memories, and— I'm forgotten. Just a name.”

  It was not Jason's reverie that Lared had come for. “Why did you give it to Sala, and not to me?”

  Justice looked away.

  “We were just quarreling about that when you came in,” said Jason. “It seems that Sala asked her—why the Day of Pain had to happen.”

  “And that was the answer? The story of John Tinker?”

  “No,” said Jason. “It's the sort of answer you give to children. It doesn't explain the Day of Pain, it's part of another story. It belongs in another place in your book. The Day of Pain did not come because there was too much suffering for my children to handle all at once. My children did not run out of power to heal mankind's ills.”

  Lared was determined to make Justice herself speak to him. “Then why did you stop?”

  Justice still looked away.

  “It is to tell that story,” said Jason, “that we're writing our book.”

  Lared thought of how his book had been given to him, and remembered the tale that Sala told, and shuddered. “Did you give her that story as a dream? Did she see John Tinker die?”

  That finally provoked Justice to speech. Into his mind she said, I gave it to her in words. What do you think I am?

  “I think you are someone who sees pain and can heal it but walks away.”

  Lared did not have to be able to see behind the eyes to know that his words stung her.

  “What,” said Jason, “and if she walked in from the snow would you kick her to death? Wait until you understand before you judge. Now go to bed. You had your brush with death the other night, you've watched my survival in Doon's garden, that's what you wanted. No one helped you till you had accomplished what you set out to do. If I had found you and stopped you, or if Justice had warmed you on your way, so that you were never in any danger, what would it have meant, your hour naked in the snow?”

  Lared did not say the answer, because it would have felt like surrender. Or apology. Did not say it, but of course they heard it anyway, and he went back down the stairs to sleep.

  When he got, there, he found his mother awake and waiting for him. She did not say a word, just covered him up and went back to bed. I am watched, he thought. Even my mother watches. That was a better answer than the one that Jason and Justice had given him. With that answer, he could sleep.

  And when he slept, he could dream.

  It was morning, and Kapock got up early to raise the fire. There was a new smell in the air. The others joked that with sheep around him all the time Kapock couldn't smell anything, but it wasn't true. He could smell everything, but everything smelled just a little bit like sheep.

  The new smell was snow, a mere thumb-thick blanket on the ground. It was early. Kapock wondered if that was a sign of a hard or easy winter. What weather would Jason send this year, he wondered, for this was the first winter that Jason was not with them, the first winter that Kapock was the Mayor. I wish you would not go, Kapock had said. And if you go, I wish you would make Sara be the Major. But Jason said, “Sara is best at naming and telling tales, and you are best at knowing what is right and wrong.”

  It was true that Sara was good at naming. She made Jason tell her again about the Star Tower where the Ice People slept she was the one who named it Star Tower. From the stories she decided that the place where they all lived on the north side of the Star River was Heaven City, and the huge river an hour's walk to the north was Heaven River, because it was as wide as the sky. And when she and Kapock took all the sheep across the Star River and lived there with them, Sara said in surprise one day, “We don't live in Heaven City anymore. We have a new place.” And she promptly named it Sheepside.

  Sara was good at naming, but Kapock wasn't very good at right and wrong. Jason could not be wrong, but Kapock was never sure what right and wrong were. Sometimes what he thought was right turned out to be right. Today everyone would know that he was right when he told them to make the thatch early, before it was even cold. Now every house was dry and warm inside, except the newest house, the one they were building for Wien and Vary. The early snow would make them all say, You were right.

  But sometimes he was wrong. He was wrong when he tried to get Batta and Hux to marry. It seemed like the right thing. They were the last two of the first six Ice People—I had married Sara and Vary had chosen Wien, Hux thought it was a' good idea. But Batta got angry and said, “Jason never told you to marry, did he?” and Kapock admitted she was right and he was wrong. Jason was never wrong, and so they were all disappointed that he was not as wise as Jason. This snowfall would help them trust him again.

  Kapock remembered four winters in the world. The first was a very dim memory of light too dazzling to see—he remembered being afraid because the snow was much too large, and he fled back into the House. The second winter was better, because that was the winter when he and Sara and Batta lived only from the food they had worked to grow themselves, and it was the winter when Jason taught Hux and Wien and Vary to walk and talk.

  The third winter was the winter when Kapock and Sara first live
d in their own house across the Star River from Heaven City. Theirs was the first marriage and theirs was the first new house, and come summer theirs was the first child born. Sara named him Ciel.

  But the fourth winter would be this winter, with Sara nursing Ciel and wanting Kapock not to talk so much, and Kapock was afraid. For now there was a problem in Heaven City that he did not know the right and wrong of.

  It was the law that when there was a large work to do, all the people worked together. That was how they built new houses in two days, and how they harvested and harrowed, how they threshed and thatched, how they cut the winter's wood and cleared new fields. The tools belonged to all of them together, and so did the hours of the day.

  So he did not know what to do when Linkeree asked him for an axe and a day. “What for?” asked Kapock. But Linkeree would not tell him. Kapock never knew how to talk to Linkeree, because Linkeree did not say much, even though he knew how. Linkeree was perhaps the cleverest of the Ice People from the second spring—he was the one who made the fish trap in the Star River, and no one taught him how, unless Jason did it secretly. It was Linkeree who first put berries in new wool so that live shirts were made blue. Linkeree was so strange that he never wore a blue shirt himself. Still, it did not take Jason to tell Kapock that Linkeree was different from the others, and in some ways better, and it made Kapock not want to argue with him, but to trust him to do right.

  “Take the axe today,” said Kapock, “but tonight you must chop your day's share of firewood.”

  Linkeree agreed to that and went.

  But all day Hux was angry. “We all work together,” he said over and over. “When Jason was here no one went off to do secret work.” It was true. But it was also true that no one had ever before spoken against a decision of Kapock's, after it was made. And all day Hux kept saying, “It's wrong for Linkeree to change everything this way.”

  Kapock could not argue with him. He too felt uneasy with the change.

  That was five days ago, and each day in the morning Linkeree asked for the axe, and each night he came back and did a good day's work while the others sang and ate and played games in First House, where the New Ones, who were just learning to crawl, would laugh and clap even though they couldn't yet speak. It was as if Linkeree were no longer one of them, as if he lived alone. And each day Hux would complain all day. Then at night when Linkeree came back, Hux would be sullen and watch Linkeree, but never said a word of complaint, and Linkeree didn't seem to notice how angry Hux was.

  But yesterday Hux followed Linkeree into the forest, and last night he told Kapock what he had seen. Linkeree had built a house.

  Linkeree had built a house, all by himself, in a clearing in the woods a half hour's walk from Heaven City. It was all wrong. Houses were built by everyone together, and they were built for a woman and a man who meant to marry. The man and woman always went in the door and closed it, and then opened every window and through each one shouted together, “We are married!” Kapock and Sara had been the first, and they had done this for the sheer joy of it; now everybody did the same, and you weren't married until you did it. But where was Linkeree's wife? What right did he have to have a house? The next marriage, as everyone knew, would be Hux and Ryanno. Why should Linkeree have a house? All he would have there would be himself. He would be alone, and far from the others. Why would he want that?

  Kapock didn't understand anything. He was not as wise as Jason. He should not be Mayor. Sara and Batta were both wiser than he. They had both made up their minds quickly. Batta said,

  “Linkeree does what he likes. He likes to be alone and think his own thoughts. No one is hurt by it.” Sara said, “Jason said that we are one people. Linkeree is saying he does not want to be part of us, and if he is not part of us then we are all less than we were.” They were both very wise. It would be so much easier for Kapock if they had only agreed with each other.

  This morning Linkeree would ask for the axe again. And this time Kapock had to do something.

  Sara came outside, bundled to protect her and little Ciel both against the cold.

  “Are you going to do something about Linkeree today?” she asked.

  So she had been thinking of it all morning, too. “Yes,” said Kapock.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don't know.”

  Sara looked at him in puzzlement. “I wonder why Jason made you Mayor,” she said.

  “I don't know,” Kapock answered. “Let's go to breakfast.”

  At breakfast Linkeree came to him, already holding the axe. He did not ask. He just stood and waited.

  Kapock looked up from his gruel. “Linkeree, why don't we all take axes, and help you finish the house you're making?”

  Linkeree's eyes went small. “It's finished.”

  “Then why do you need the axe?”

  Linkeree looked around and saw that everyone was watching. He fingered the axe. “I'm cutting trees to clear a field.”

  “We'll all do that next spring. We'll cut into the forest north of First Field, up the hill.”

  “I know,” said Linkeree. “I'll help you with that. May I take the axe?”

  “No!” shouted Hux.

  Linkeree looked coldly at Hux. “I thought that Kapock was the Mayor.”

  “It isn't right,” said Hux. “You go off every day to do work that no one needs you to do, and during the day no one sees you, and during the evening no one talks to you. It isn't right.”

  “I do my share of work,” said Linkeree. “What I do when work is done is mine.”

  “No,” said Hux. “We're all one people, Jason said so.”

  Linkeree stood silent, then handed Kapock the axe.

  Kapock handed it back. “Why don't you take us to see the house you built?” he asked.

  At that, Linkeree grew calmer. “Yes, I'd like to show you.”

  So they cleared up breakfast and left Reck and Sivel with the New Ones as they followed Linkeree eastward into the forest. Kapock walked in front, with Linkeree.

  “How did you know I built a house?”

  “Hux followed you.”

  “Hux thinks I am an ox, always to stay in my pen except when I'm needed to pull.”

  Kapock shook his head. “Hux likes things to stay the same.”

  “Is it so bad for me to be alone?”

  “I don't want you to be sad. I'm sad when I'm alone.”

  “I'm not,” said Linkeree.

  The house was strange-looking. It was smaller from end to end than the other houses they had built, but it was taller, and there were windows up high, under the roof. And strangest of all was the roof itself. It wasn't thatch. It was chips of wood overlapping, and the only thatch was at the every top.

  Linkeree saw Kapock looking at the roof. “I only had a little thatch, and so I had to do something to finish it. I think this will hold out the rain, and if it does, I won't have to make a new roof every year.”

  He showed them how he had put split logs across the tops of the walls and made a second-floor to the house, above. The first one, so that the inside of the house was not smaller after all. It was a good house, and Kapock said so. “From now on,” Kapock said, “we will put this second floor in all our new houses, because it makes more room indoors.” Everyone agreed that this was wise.

  Then Hux said, “I'm glad you made this fine house, Linkeree, because Ryanno and I are going to be married.”

  Linkeree was angry, but he answered softly. “I'm glad you and Ryanno are going to be married, Hux, and I will help you build a house.”

  Hux said, “There is a house, and Ryanno and I are next to need a house, so it is ours.”

  And Linkeree said, “I made this house myself. I cut the wood, I split and notched the logs, I cut the blocks for the roof and tied them all in place myself. No one helped me, and no one will live in this house but me.”

  And Hux said, “You used the axe that belongs to all of us. You used the days that belong to all of us. You
ate the food that belongs to all of us. Your house is on ground that belongs to all of us. Your life belongs to all of us, and all of us belong to you.”

  “I don't want you. And you don't have me.”

  “You ate the bread that I helped grow last year!” shouted Hux. “Give me back my bread!”

  Then Linkeree doubled up his fist, and with arms strong from lifting and pulling logs, he hit Hux in the belly, and hurt him. Hux wept. Such a thing had never happened before, and it did not take much wisdom for Kapock to see that this was wrong.

  “What will you do now, Linkeree?” asked Kapock. “If you want to keep the axe all to yourself, and I say no, will you hit me? If you want to marry a woman, and she says no, will you hit her too until she says yes?”

  Linkeree held his list in his other hand, and stared at it.

  Kapock tried to think. What would Jason do? But he could not be Jason—Jason would see into their minds and know what they thought. Kapock couldn't do that. He could only judge what people said and did. “Words should be answered with words,” said Kapock. “A person is not a fish, to be beaten on a rock. A person is not a goat, to be whacked when it doesn't move. Words should be answered with words, and hits should be answered with hits.” People agreed. It seemed fair.

  Hux seemed willing to supply the vengeful blow himself, but Kapock wouldn't let him. “If you hit him it would be the same quarrel going on. We must choose someone else to hit him, so that the blow comes from all of us, and not just from one.”

  But no one wanted to do it.

  At last Sara handed little Ciel to Batta. “I will do it,” she said, “because it must be done.” She strode to Linkeree and hit him hard in the belly with her fist. She was as strong as any man, from lifting sheep and making fences with Kapock, and Linkeree got the worst of it.