Earthborn (Homecoming)

by Orson Scott Card

  “I don’t have to believe in the Keeper of Earth to believe in the great intuitive abilities of your son and daughter.”

  Motiak looked at Bego gravely. “Be careful whom you speak to about these thoughts.”

  “I’m aware of the laws concerning heresy and treason. But if you think about it, Motiak, such laws would never have been necessary if people hadn’t thought these thoughts before, and said them out loud.”

  “Our question should not be, Does the Keeper of Earth exist? Our question should be, What is the Keeper of Earth trying to accomplish by bringing my ancestors to this world and placing us in the midst of your people and the earth people? What is the Keeper trying to build, and how can we help?”

  “I would rather think,” said Bego, “of what my king is trying to do, and how I might help him.”

  Motiak nodded, his eyes heavy-lidded. “If I can’t be your brother in our belief in the Keeper, then I will have to make do with your loyalty to me as your king.”

  “In that you can trust perfectly,” said Bego.

  “I know I can,” said Motiak.

  “I beg you not to stop me from teaching your children,” said Bego.

  Motiak closed his eyes entirely. “I’m so tired, Bego. I need to sleep before I can think any more about these things. As you leave, please ask the servants to come and carry my children to their beds.”

  “It won’t be necessary,” said Bego. “They’re both awake.”

  Motiak looked at Mon and Edhadeya, whose heads still rested on their arms and who had not stirred from their motionless slumber. But now, sheepishly, they both raised their heads. “I didn’t want to interrupt,” said Mon.

  “No, I imagine not,” answered Motiak wryly. “Well, then, we can spare the servants the onerous labor of carrying you. Go to bed, both of you. You earned the right to witness the translation, but not to hear my private counsel with my friend.”

  “Forgive me,” Edhadeya whispered.

  “Forgive you?” echoed Motiak. “Already I’ve forgiven you. Now go to bed.”

  They followed Bego wordlessly out the door.

  Motiak remained alone in the library for a little while, touching now the gold leaves, now the Index.

  In a short while, the head copyist came in to take away Bego’s carefully written waxed barks. While he was there, Motiak wrapped up the Index; and when the copyist was gone, the king carried both the Index and the gold leaves to the inmost chamber of his treasury, down in the belly of the house.

  As he walked, he spoke to the Keeper in his mind, asking questions, pleading for answers, but finally asking only this: Give me help. My priests will answer as they always answer, interpreting the old texts in the same ways their predecessors already decided to interpret them. This new history won’t even wake them from their intellectual slumber—they already think they understand everything, but now I think they understand nothing. Give me help, someone else who can bear this burden with me, someone who can hear my fears and worries, who can help me know what you want of me.

  Then, standing in the doorway of the treasury, the ten guards lined up at the entrance, watching him intently, Motiak had a sudden vision. As clearly as if he was standing in front of him, Motiak saw the man that Edhadeya had seen in her dream. Akmaro, the rebel priest of Nuab.

  As quickly as it came, the vision was gone.

  “Are you all right?” asked the nearest guard.

  “Now I am,” said Motiak. He strode away, climbing the stairs up into the living quarters of the house.

  He had never seen any vision of Akmaro before, but he knew that the man he had glimpsed for that one moment was him. Surely he had been shown that face because the Keeper meant Akmaro to be the friend that Motiak had pleaded for. And if Akmaro was to be his friend, the Keeper must plan to bring him to Darakemba.

  On the way to his bedroom, he passed Dudagu’s room. Normally she would still be asleep at this early hour of the morning, but she came to the door as he walked by. “Where were you all night, Tidaka?”

  “Working,” he answered. “Don’t let them waken me until noon.”

  “What, am I supposed to look for all your servants and tell them what your schedule is? How have I offended you, that you suddenly treat me like a common . . .”

  Her voice faded out as he drew the curtain across the door to his inner chamber. “Send me a friend and counselor, Keeper,” whispered Motiak. “If I am a worthy servant of yours, send Akmaro to me now.”

  Motiak slept almost as soon as he lay down, slept and did not dream.

  * * *

  As they walked to the sleeping quarters of the king’s house, Mon and Edhadeya talked. Or rather, at first Mon talked.

  “The Index did the translating, right? Father only spoke whatever appeared before him. Bego only wrote whatever Father said. So who is the machine?”

  Sleepily Edhadeya murmured, “The Index is the machine.”

  “So we’re told. And before tonight, Bego worked and puzzled and guessed about the language of the twenty-four leaves. Then he tested his answers with me as if against the multiplication table. Is this right, Mon? Yes or no, Mon? One answer or the other was all I could give. I barely even had to understand. Yes. No. Yes. Who is the machine?”

  “A machine that talks nonsense instead of letting you sleep,” said Edhadeya. “Everyone will want one.”

  But Mon wasn’t listening to her. He was already off in another direction. He knew he was desperately unhappy about something that happened tonight; if he tried enough guesses as to what it was, one of them was bound to be right. “Dedaya, do you really want your dreams? The true ones? Don’t you wish they didn’t come to you?”

  In spite of herself, Edhadeya awakened to this question; it had never occurred to her to question her gift. “If I hadn’t dreamed, Mon, we wouldn’t know what was in the book.”

  “We still don’t know. We slept through most of it.”

  Fully alert now, Edhadeya continued. “And I don’t wish the dream had come to someone else. I wanted it—I was glad of it. It makes me part of something important.”

  “Part of something? A piece of something? I want to be whole. Myself. Not part of anything but me.”

  “That’s so stupid, Mon. You’ve spent your whole life wanting to be someone else. Now suddenly you want to be you?”

  “I wish I were better than I am, yes. I wish I could fly, yes.”

  Edhadeya was used to this. Boys always argued as if they knew they had the forces of logic on their side, even when they were being completely irrational. Even when their “logic” defied the evidence. “You wish you could be part of the games, the air dances of the young angels. Part of them. And part of the evening song. You can’t very well do any of that by yourself.”

  “That’s different,” said Mon.

  Oh, yes, let’s redefine our terms to eliminate the contradiction. It drove Edhadeya crazy, because after discussions like this, the boys would turn around and talk about how girls weren’t reasonable, they were emotional, so you couldn’t even have an intelligent discussion with them—but it was the boys who fled from the evidence and constantly shifted their arguments to fit what they wanted to believe. And it was Edhadeya who was ruthlessly realistic, refusing to deny her own feelings or the facts she observed around her. And refusing to deny that she reached her conclusions first, because of her inmost desires, and only afterward constructed the arguments to support them. Only boys were so foolish that they actually believed that their arguments were their reasons.

  But there was no use explaining any of this to Mon. Edhadeya was tired. She didn’t need to turn this into a lengthy argument about arguments. So she answered him in the simplest possible way. “No it’s not,” she said.

  Mon took this as license to ignore her, of course. “I don’t want to be part of the Keeper, that’s what I don’t want to be part of. Who knows or cares what he’s planning? I don’t want to be part of his plans.”

  “We all are,” said
Edhadeya. “So isn’t it better to be an important part?”

  “His favorite puppet?” asked Mon scornfully.

  “Her willing friend.”

  “If he’s a friend, let’s see his face once in a while, all right? Let’s see him come for a visit!”

  Edhadeya decided it was time to inject a little reality into the discussion. “I know what you’re really angry about.”

  “I should hope so, since I just told you.”

  “You’re angry because you want to be the one in charge, making all the plans.”

  She could see by the momentary startlement in his eyes that she had hit upon a truth that he had never thought of. But of course he resisted the idea. “Half right, maybe,” he said. “I want to be making all the plans for me.”

  “And you never want to have another person act out just the teensiest little thing you plan for them to do?”

  “That’s right. I ask nothing of anyone, and I don’t want anyone to make demands on me. That would be true happiness.”

  Edhadeya was tired, and Mon was being unusually silly. “Mon, you can’t go five minutes without telling me what to do.”

  Mon was outraged. “I haven’t told you a single thing to do this whole conversation!”

  “You’ve been doing nothing but telling me what to think.”

  “I’ve been telling you what I think.”

  “Oh, and you weren’t trying to make me agree?”

  Of course he was, and he knew it, and his whole claim not to want to control anyone else was in tatters, but Mon could never admit it. Edhadeya was always amused, watching that panic in her brothers’ eyes when they were trapped and desperately searching for a way out of their own illogic. “I was trying,” said Mon, “to get you to understand.”

  “So you were trying to get me to do something!”

  “No I wasn’t! I don’t care what you do or think or understand or anything!”

  “Then why are you talking to me at all?” she asked with her sweetest smile.

  “I was saying it to myself! You just happened to be here!”

  Getting even calmer and quieter as he got more upset, Edhadeya gently answered, “If you don’t want to control what I think, why did you raise your voice? Why did you argue with me at all?”

  At last Mon had nowhere left to retreat. He was honest; when he couldn’t hide from the truth any longer, he faced it. That’s why he was Edhadeya’s favorite brother. That and the fact that Aronha was always too busy and the others were way too young.

  “I hate you!” Mon cried. “You’re just trying to rule over me and make me crazy!”

  She couldn’t resist teasing him, though. “How could I rule over a free boy like you?”

  “Go away and leave me alone!”

  “Oh, the puppetmaster has spoken.” She began to walk away from him, walking stiffly, not moving her arms. “Now the puppet moves, obeying. What is Mon’s plan for his puppet? He wants her to go away.”

  “I really hate you,” said Mon. But she could tell he was having a hard time keeping himself from laughing.

  She turned and faced him, not teasing him now. “Only because I insist on being my own woman and not thinking all the thoughts you plan for me. The Keeper sends me better dreams than you do. Good night, dear brother!”

  But Mon was angry and hurt, and didn’t want to let her go. “You don’t care about any of this! You only like to make fun of me.”

  “I do like to make fun of you—but I also care about this very much. I want to be part of the Keeper’s plans because I think the Keeper wants us to be happy.”

  “Oh, a fine job he’s doing, then! I’m ecstatic.” There were tears in his eyes. Edhadeya knew how he hated it when tears came to his eyes. She would do nothing to provoke him further, nothing to embarrass him.

  “Not make us each happy, not all the time,” she said. “But us, all of us, she wants us to be at peace, getting along, helping each other to be as happy as we want to be, as we can be.” She thought of what Uss-Uss had said she wanted in order to be happy. “The Keeper is sick of us having slaves and masters, fighting wars against everybody, hating each other. She doesn’t want us to destroy ourselves the way the Rasulum did.”

  She could tell from his noncomprehension that he must not have been awake for any part of the end of the translation. “I’ll believe the Keeper wants me happy the day I sprout wings!” he said sullenly.

  She couldn’t resist one last jab of truth. “It’s not the Keeper’s fault that you haven’t yet found anything useful to do with your hands.”

  Without waiting for an answer, she fled to her room. As soon as she was alone, she felt guilty for having said to him something as brutal as her last remark. For even though in an argument he denied and excused and scrambled to defend himself, she knew that in the silence of his own mind he would recognize truth. He would know what was right.

  Yet with his marvelous gift of knowing right from wrong, why couldn’t he realize that his yearning to be something other than himself was hopelessly wrong, was wasting his life and poisoning his heart?

  Or was that longing to be an angel something the Keeper actually wanted him to have?

  She lay down on her mat; then, as usual, got up immediately and removed the three soft pads that Dudagu always had the servants put there “because a lady shouldn’t sleep on a hard mat like a soldier.” Edhadeya never bothered to get angry with Uss-Uss for not removing the padding—if the king’s wife ordered something, no servant would dare disobey her, and it would be cruel to rebuke Uss-Uss for doing what she must to survive.

  No, not Uss-Uss. Voozhum.

  Was that part of the Keeper’s plan? To free the diggers from slavery? The words had come so easily to Edhadeya’s lips when she was arguing with Mon. But now she had to imagine the real possibility of it. What was the Keeper planning? And how much turmoil would there be before the plans were done?

  * * *

  Akmaro looked out over the fields of potatoes that were growing between the rows of cornstalks, already harvested. Now in the last of the season, it was time to dig them up, sorting them into seed potatoes and eating potatoes. Who would have thought that maize and potatoes planted in slavery would be harvested—well, not in freedom, but not in fear, either. The guards kept well back most of the time, and no one plagued them, not the adults, not the children. They worked hard, and there would be plenty of tribute for Pabulog to take away from them. But there was more food here than they needed anyway. Enough and to spare.

  That is the gift the Keeper gave to us: Instead of remaining in fear and loathing as we were, my wife’s courage and wisdom turned our worst enemies, the children of Pabulog, into friends. They will not rebel against their father, of course—they’re too young and Pabulog too cruel and unpredictable for that. But they’ve given us peace. And surely even Pabulog will be able to see that it’s better to have Akmaro’s people as productive serfs than as bitter, resentful tormented slaves.

  The only dark place in the scene that Akmaro surveyed was his son, Akma. Akmadis, Kmadadis, beloved of my heart, my hopes are in you as your mother’s hopes are in her sweet daughter. Why have you come to hate me so much? You’re clever and wise in your heart, Akma, you can see that it’s better to forgive and make friends out of enemies. What is the cause of all this bitterness that makes you so blind? I speak to you and you hear nothing. Or worse—you act is if my voice were the warcry of an enemy in your ears.

  Chebeya had comforted him, of course, assuring him that even though the hostility was real enough, the ties between father and son were, if anything, stronger than ever. “You’re the center of his life, Kmadaro,” she told him. “He’s angry now, he thinks he hates you, but in fact he’s in orbit around you like the Moon around the Earth.”

  Small comfort, to face his son’s hatred when he wanted—when he deserved!—only love, and had given only love.

  But . . . that was Akmaro’s personal tragedy, his personal burden, to have lost the love
of his son. In time that would get better, or it would not get better; as long as Akmaro did his best, it was out of his hands. Most important was the work he was doing in the cause of the Keeper. He had thought, when he first fled from the knives of Nuak’s assassins, that the Keeper had a great work in mind for him. That Binaro’s words had been entrusted to him, and he must teach them far and wide. Teach that the Keeper of Earth meant for the people of sky, earth, and all between to live as sisters and brothers, family and friends, with no one master over another, with no rich or poor, but all equal partakers of the land the Keeper had given them, with all people keeping the covenants they made with each other, raising their families in safety and peace, and neither hunger nor pride to shame the happiness of anyone. Oh, yes, Akmaro had visions of whole kingdoms awakening to the simplicity of the message the Keeper had given to Binaro, and through him to Akmaro, and through him to all the world.

  Instead, his message had been given to these nearly five hundred souls, humans every one of them. And the four sons of Pabulog.

  But it was enough, wasn’t it? They had proven their courage, these five hundred. They had proven their loyalty and strength. They had borne all things, and they would yet be able to bear many things. That was a good thing that they had created together—this community was a good thing. And when it came to a battle with their most evil enemy, Pabulog, a man even richer in hatred than he was in money and power, Pabulog had won the part with swords and whips, but Akmaro—no, Akmaro’s community—no, the Keeper’s people—had won the battle of hearts and minds, and won the friendship of Pabulog’s sons.

  They were good boys, once they learned, once they were taught. They would have the courage to remain good men, despite their father. If I have lost one son—I don’t know how—then at least I have gained these four ur-sons, who should have been the inheritance of another man if he hadn’t lost them by trying to use them for evil ends.