Earthborn (Homecoming)

by Orson Scott Card

  “Forgive my asking,” said Chebeya, “but where is this sort of detail about Rasa’s house written down?”

  Shedemei said nothing, simply led them on to a cell-like bedroom. “Some of my teachers think this is rather an ascetic room; to others, it is the most luxurious place they’ve ever slept. It doesn’t matter—if they work for me and board with me, this is the kind of room they sleep in.”

  “Which teacher sleeps in this one?” asked Luet.

  “Me,” said Shedemei.

  “I must say,” said Chebeya, “that this school could not be more perfectly modeled on my husband’s teachings if he had drawn up the constitutions himself.”

  Shedemei smiled coldly. “But he never has drawn up constitutions for a girls’ school, has he?”

  “No,” said Chebeya, feeling as though she were confessing some horrible crime.

  By now they had wound their way through the connected houses until they were on the opposite side of the courtyard, near the place where Voozhum had gone inside. Not surprisingly, they found her teaching in a room on the ground floor.

  “Would you like to go in and listen for a little while?” whispered Shedemei.

  “Not if it would disturb her,” said Edhadeya.

  “She won’t hear you, and her vision’s none too good, either,” said Shedemei. “I doubt she’ll recognize you from the opposite end of the room.”

  “Then yes, please.” Edhadeya turned to the others. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  They didn’t, and so Shedemei led them in and offered them stools that were no different from the ones the students sat on. Only Voozhum herself had a chair with a back and arms, which no one could begrudge her, feeble as she was.

  She was teaching a group of older girls, though they could hardly be advanced students, since the school itself was so new.

  “So Emeezem asked Oykib, ‘What virtue does the Keeper of Earth value most? Is it the tallness of Ancient Ones?’—for that was what they called the middle people when they first returned to Earth—’or is it the wings of the skymeat?’—for that was the terrible name for the sky people that Emeezem had not yet learned she must not use—’or is it the devoted worship we give to the gods?’ Well, what do you think Oykib told her?”

  Chebeya listened to several of the girls reject all virtues that only one of the sentient species would possess, and thought, This is no more than mere indoctrination. But then the proposals became more universal and, occasionally, more subtle. Hopefulness. Intelligence. Comprehension of truth. Nobility. Each proposal led to a consideration of the particular virtue, and whether it might be used against the laws of the Keeper. Much of the discussion showed that today was something of an examination; they had discussed these virtues before, had thought about them and argued about them. A criminal might hope to evade punishment. Intelligence can be used to undermine and destroy a virtuous man. Just because someone comprehends the truth doesn’t mean he values it or will uphold it; liars have to comprehend the truth in order to defend their lie. A noble woman might sacrifice all she has in an unworthy cause, if nobility is not accompanied by wisdom.

  “Wisdom, then,” said a girl. “For isn’t that the virtue of knowing what the Keeper’s will would be?”

  “Is it?” answered Voozhum mildly.

  Of course, all this conversation was very loud, partly because Voozhum’s deafness no doubt required it, and partly because the girls had the normal exuberance of youth. Chebeya, though, had never seen such exuberance used inside a classroom. And while she had seen teachers try to get their students to discuss issues, it had never worked until now. She tried to think why, and then realized—it’s because the girls know that Voozhum does not expect them to guess the answer in her mind, but rather to defend and attack the ideas they themselves bring out. And because she treats their answers with respect. No, she treats them with respect, as if their ideas were worthy of consideration.

  And they were worthy of consideration. More than once Chebeya wanted to speak up and join in, and she could feel Luet and Edhadeya grow restless on either side of her—no doubt for the same reason.

  Finally Edhadeya did speak up. “Isn’t that the very point that Spokoyro rejected in his dialogue with the Khrugi?”

  A deathly silence fell upon the room.

  “I’m sorry,” Edhadeya said. “I know I had no right to speak.”

  Chebeya looked for Shedemei to say something to ease the awful tension in the room, but the schoolmaster seemed completely content with the situation.

  It was Voozhum who spoke up. “It’s not you, child. It’s what you said.”

  One of the girls—an earth person, it happened—explained more. “We were waiting for you to tell us the story of . . . of Spokoyro and the Khrugi. We’ve never heard it. They must have been humans. And not ancient ones. And men.”

  “Is that forbidden here?” asked Chebeya.

  “Not forbidden,” said the girl, looking confused. “It’s just—the school was only started a little while ago, and this is a class in the moral philosophers of the earth people, so . . .”

  “I’m sorry,” said Edhadeya. “I spoke in ignorance. My example was irrelevant.”

  Voozhum spoke up again, her old voice cracking often, but loud in the way deaf people’s voices often are. “These girls haven’t had a classical education,” she said. “But you have. You are most fortunate, my child. These girls must make do with such poor offerings as I can give them.”

  Edhadeya laughed scornfully, then immediately thought better of it; but it was too late.

  “I know that laugh,” said Voozhum.

  “I laughed because I knew you were making fun of me,” said Edhadeya. “And besides, I also ‘made do’ with your ‘poor offerings.’ ”

  “I understand that my teaching cheapened you,” said Voozhum.

  “You never heard that from me. And I never heard it myself until today.”

  “I’ve never spoken to you as a free woman,” said Voozhum.

  “And I’ve never spoken to you except as an impertinent child.”

  Finally the girls in the classroom understood who it was who was visiting with them that day, for they all had heard that Voozhum once was the personal chamberservant to the daughter of the king. “Edhadeya,” they whispered.

  “My young mistress,” said Voozhum, “now a lady. You were often rude, but never impertinent. Tell us now, please. What is the virtue that the Keeper most values?”

  “I don’t know what Oykib said, because this story isn’t known among the humans,” said Edhadeya.

  “Good,” said Voozhum. “Then you won’t be remembering or guessing, you’ll be thinking.”

  “I think the virtue that the Keeper most admires is to love as the Keeper loves.”

  “And how is this? How does the Keeper love?”

  “The love of the Keeper,” said Edhadeya, obviously searching, obviously thinking of ideas that she had never considered all that seriously before. “The love of the Keeper is the love of the mother who punishes her child for naughtiness, but then embraces the same child to comfort her tears.”

  Edhadeya waited for the onslaught of contrary opinions that had greeted earlier suggestions, but she was met only by silence. “Please,” she said, “just because I’m the daughter of the king doesn’t mean you can’t disagree with me the way you disagreed with each other a moment ago.”

  Still, not a word, though there was no shuffling or embarrassed looking away, either.

  “Perhaps they do not disagree,” said Voozhum. “Perhaps they hope you will teach them more of this idea.”

  Edhadeya immediately rose to the challenge. “I think the Keeper wants us to see the world as she sees it. To pretend that we are the Keeper, and then to try to create wherever we can a small island where all the other virtues can be shared among good people.”

  There was a murmur among the girls. “Words of a true dreamer,” one of them whispered.

  “And I think,” said Edhadeya
, “that if that really is the virtue most favored by the Keeper, then you have created a virtuous classroom here, Voozhum.”

  “Long ago,” said Voozhum, “when I lived in chains, sometimes chains of iron, but always chains of stone on my heart, there was a room where I could go and someone knew my virtues and listened to my thoughts as if I were truly alive and a creature of light instead of a worm of mud and darkness.”

  Edhadeya burst into tears. “I was never that good to you, Uss-Uss.”

  “You always were. Does my little girl still remember how I held her when she cried?”

  Edhadeya ran to her and embraced her. The girls watched in awe as both Edhadeya and Voozhum wept, each in her fashion.

  Chebeya leaned across Edhadeya’s empty stool to whisper to Shedemei, “This is what you hoped for, isn’t it?”

  Shedemei whispered back, “I think it’s a good lesson, don’t you?”

  And indeed it was, to see the daughter of the king embracing an old digger woman, both of them crying for joy, crying for remembrance of lost times, of ancient love.

  “And what did Oykib say?” whispered Chebeya to Shedemei.

  “He didn’t really answer,” said Shedemei. “He said, ‘To answer that, I would have to be the Keeper.’ ”

  Chebeya thought for a few moments. Then she said, “But that is an answer. The same answer Edhadeya gave.”

  Shedemei smiled. “Oykib always was a trickster. He had a way with words.”

  It was disturbing, this tendency of Shedemei’s to speak of the Heroes as if she knew all their secrets.

  They spent the rest of the day in the school and sat at Shedemei’s table at supper. The food was plain—many a rich woman would have turned up her nose at it, and Luet could see that Edhadeya didn’t even know what some of it was. But in Akmaro’s house, Luet and her mother had eaten the simple fare of the common people all their lives, and they ate with relish. It was plain to Luet that everything that happened in Shedemei’s school—no, ‘Rasaro’s House’—was a lesson. The food, the mealtime conversation, the way the cooking and cleaning up were done, the way people walked quietly but briskly in the halls—everything had a point to it, everything expressed a way of life, a way of thought, a way of treating people.

  At supper, Edhadeya seemed giddy, which Luet understood, though it worried her a little. It was as if Edhadeya had lost her sense of decorum, her gentle carefulness. She kept goading Shedemei into saying something, but Luet had no way of guessing what the older girl had in mind.

  “We heard that you were dangerous, teaching the diggers to rebel,” said Edhadeya.

  “What an interesting thought,” said Shedemei. “After years of slavery, the thought of rebelling doesn’t occur to the diggers until a middle-aged human suggests it? Rebellion against what, now that they’re free? I think your friends are consumed with guilt, to fear rebellion now that the reason for it has finally been removed.”

  “That’s what I thought, too,” said Edhadeya.

  “Tell the truth now. No one actually said these things to you.”

  Edhadeya glanced at Chebeya. “To Luet’s mother, of course.”

  “And why not to you? Is it because you’re the king’s daughter, and your father was the one who freed the slaves? Do you think they’ll ever forgive your father for that blunder?”

  Edhadeya suppressed her laughter. “You really mustn’t talk that way to the daughter of the king. I’m not supposed to listen when people say my father blundered.”

  “But in the king’s council, isn’t he criticized freely? That’s what I heard.”

  “Well, yes, but those are his men.”

  “And what are you, his pet fish?”

  “A woman doesn’t pass judgment on the actions of a king!” Again Edhadeya suppressed laughter, as if this were hysterically funny.

  Shedemei answered dryly, “Around here, I gather that a woman doesn’t squat to pee unless some man tells her that her bladder’s full.”

  This was too much for Edhadeya. She burst into loud laughter and fell off her stool.

  Luet helped her up. “What’s got into you?” Luet demanded.

  “I don’t know,” said Edhadeya. “I just feel so . . .”

  “So free,” said Shedemei helpfully.

  “At home,” said Edhadeya at almost the same time.

  “But you don’t act like that at home!” protested Luet.

  “No, I don’t,” said Edhadeya, and suddenly her eyes filled with tears. She turned to Shedemei. “Was it really like this in Rasa’s house?”

  “There were no earth people or sky people there,” said Shedemei. “It was another planet, and the only sentient species was human.”

  “I want to stay here,” said Edhadeya.

  “You’re too young to teach,” said Shedemei.

  “I’ve had a very good education.”

  “You mean that you have excelled at your schooling,” said Shedemei. “But you haven’t yet lived a life. Therefore you’re of no use to me.”

  “Then let me stay as a student,” said Edhadeya.

  “Haven’t you listened to me? You’ve already completed your schooling.”

  “Then let me stay as a servant in this place,” said Edhadeya. “You can’t make me go back.”

  At this, Chebeya had to interrupt. “You make it sound as though you were monstrously mistreated in your father’s house.”

  “I’m ignored there, don’t you see? I really am Father’s pet fish. His pet something. Better to be a cook in this place. . . .”

  “But you see that we all take our turn at the cooking,” said Shedemei. “There’s no place for you here, not yet, Edhadeya. Or perhaps I should say, there is a place for you, but you’re not yet ready to fill it.”

  “How long must I wait?”

  “If you wait,” said Shedemei, “you’ll never be ready.”

  Edhadeya fell silent then, and ate thoughtfully, wiping sauce from her bowl with the last of her bread.

  It was Luet’s turn, finally, to say the thing that had been bothering her most of the afternoon. “You refused Mother’s invitation because you were too busy,” said Luet. “But this school fairly runs itself. You could have come.”

  Mother was annoyed with her. “Luet, haven’t I taught you better manners than to—”

  “That’s all right, Chebeya,” said Shedemei. “I refused your invitation because I’ve seen the houses of rich men and kings. Whereas you have never seen such a school as this.”

  Mother stiffened. “We’re not rich.”

  “Yet you have the leisure to come calling during working hours? You may live modestly, Chebeya, but I see no streaks of dirt and sweat on your face.”

  Luet could see that Mother was hurt by this, and so she plunged in to turn the conversation back to something less difficult. “I’ve never heard of a woman schoolmaster,” she said.

  “Which only proves how dishonest the men who taught you have been. Not only was Rasa a schoolmaster, she was also the teacher of Nafai and Issib, Elemak and Mebbekew, and many, many other boys.”

  “But that was in ancient times,” said Luet.

  Shedemei gave one bark of laughter and said, “Doesn’t feel that long ago to me.”

  After supper was over, they walked slowly through the courtyard as the children sang together, in their rooms, in the bathhouse, or reading in the waning light of day. There was something strange about the song, and it took a while to realize what it was. Luet stopped suddenly and blurted it out. “I never knew that diggers sing!”

  Shedemei put an arm around her. Luet was surprised—she had never thought this cold woman would be capable of such an affectionate gesture. Nor did she do it the way men sometimes did, putting an arm around a lesser man to show affection but also power, superiority, ownership. It was . . . yes, it was sisterly. “No, you never knew they could sing. Nor had I ever heard their voices raised in song until I started this school.” Shedemei walked in silence beside her for a moment. “Do you kno
w, Luet, for all I know the diggers never did sing during all those years that they lived in such close proximity to the angels. Because they were always at war. Perhaps because singing was a thing that ‘skymeat’ did, and therefore was beneath their dignity. But here in slavery they lost their dignity and learned music. I think there might be a lesson in that, don’t you?”

  Luet assumed that Shedemei had been planning to tell her this all along, and that the lesson must therefore be aimed particularly at her, though later she would realize that Shedemei really was simply making an observation and meant nothing by it. “I think I understand,” Luet said. “I was in slavery once, you know. Do you think all the songs of my life come from that? Is captivity a stage we should all pass through?”

  To her surprise, there were tears in Shedemei’s eyes. “No. No one should go through captivity. Some people find music in it, like you, like so many of the earth people here, but only because the music was already in them, waiting for a chance to get out. But your brother didn’t find much music in his captivity, did he?”

  “How do you know my brother?” asked Luet.

  “Did he?” insisted Shedemei, refusing to be diverted.

  “I don’t know,” said Luet.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t think his captivity has ended yet.”

  Another silence. Then Shedemei answered softly, “No. No, I think you’re right. I think that when his captivity finally ends, he, too, might find a song in his heart.”

  “I’ve heard him sing,” said Luet. “It isn’t much.”

  “No, you haven’t,” said Shedemei. “And when he does sing, if he does, it will be a song such as you have never heard.”

  “Whatever it is, if Akma sings it, it won’t be on key.”

  Shedemei laughed and hugged her close.

  They were near the front door of the house, and one of the teachers was already opening it. For a moment Luet thought that she had opened it in order to let them out, but it wasn’t so. There were three men on the porch, and two of them were humans of the king’s guard. The third was an angel, and after a moment Luet realized that it was old Husu, who had once been head of the spies and now was retired to the supposedly less demanding position of an officer in the civil guard. What could he possibly be doing here?