As she expected, Akma was in the king’s house, in the library wing, where he slept most nights now. Not that he was asleep. He was up, reading, studying, jotting down notes to himself in the wax on a bark; one of dozens of barks covered with scribbling. “Writing a book?” she asked.
“I’m not a holy man,” he said. “I don’t write books. I write speeches.” He swept the barks to one side. She liked the way he looked at her, as if he had been hoping she would come. She had his full attention, and his eyes didn’t wander over her body the way most men’s did. He looked into her eyes. She felt as though she ought to say something very clever or very wise, to justify his interest in her.
No, she told herself sternly. That’s just one of his tricks. One of the things he does to win people over. And I’m not here to be won over. I came to teach, not to be taught.
No wonder I once loved him, if he always looked at me like that.
To her surprise, what she blurted out now was nothing like what she had come to say. “I used to love you,” she said.
A sad smile came over his face. “Used to,” he whispered. “Before there was any issue of belief.”
“Is it an issue of belief, Akma?” she asked.
“For two people to love each other, they have to meet, don’t they? And two people who live in utterly different worlds have no chance of meeting.”
She knew what he meant; they had had this conversation before, and he had insisted that while she lived in an imaginary world in which the Keeper of Earth watched over everyone, giving purpose to their lives, he lived in a real world of stone and air and water, where people had to find their own purposes.
“Yet we’re meeting here,” she said.
“That remains to be seen.” His words were cold and distant, but his eyes searched her face. For what? What does he want to see? Some remnant of my love for him? But that is the one thing that I dare not show him because I dare not find it in myself. I can’t love him, because only a monstrous, callous woman could love the man who caused so much pointless suffering.
“Have you been hearing the reports from the provinces?”
“There are many reports,” said Akma. “Which did you have in mind?”
She refused to play along with his pretense of innocence. She waited.
“Yes, I’ve heard the reports,” he said. “A terrible business. I wonder your father hasn’t called in the military.”
“To attack what army?” she asked scornfully. “You’re smarter than that, Akma. An army is useless against thugs who melt away into the city and hide by wearing the clothing of respectable men of business, trade, or labor during the day.”
“I’m a scholar, not a tactician,” said Akma.
“Are you?” she asked. “I’ve thought about this a great deal, Akma, and when I look at you it’s not a scholar that I see.”
“No? What monster have you decided that I am?”
“Not a monster, either. Just a common thug. Your hands have torn holes in the wings of angel children. Diggers hide in terror during the night because they fear seeing your shadow come between them and the moonlight.”
“Are you seriously accusing me of this? I have never raised my hand in violence against anyone.”
“You caused it, Akma. You set them in motion, the whole army of them, the whole nasty, cruel, evil army of child-beaters.”
He shuddered; his face contorted with some deep emotion. “You can’t be saying this to me. You know that it’s a lie.”
“They’re your friends. You’re their hero, Akma. You and my brothers.”
“I don’t control them!” he said. He only barely controlled his voice.
“Oh, you don’t?” she answered. “What, do they control you then?”
He rose from the table, knocking over his stool as he did. “If they did control me, Edhadeya, I’d be out preaching against Father’s pathetic little religion right now. They beg, they plead. Ominer’s all for doing it, Pour the bronze while it still flows, he tells me. But I refuse to lend my name to any of these persecutions. I don’t want anybody hurt—not even diggers, despite what you think of me. And those angels, with holes torn in their wings—do you think I didn’t hear that with the same rage as any decent person? Do you think I don’t want the thugs who did that punished?” His voice trembled with emotion.
“Do you think they would have had the boldness to do it if it weren’t for you?”
“I didn’t invent this! I didn’t create hatred and resentment of the diggers! It was our fathers who did it, when they changed the whole religious structure of the state to include the diggers as if they were people—”
“Thirteen years since they made those changes, and in all those years, nothing happened. Then you announced that you’ve ‘discovered’ that there is no Keeper—in spite of my true dream by which the Keeper saved the Zenifi! In spite of knowing that it was only by the power of the Oversoul that the very records from which you took your ‘proof were translated. You persuade my brothers—even Mon, I don’t know how—even Aronha, who always used to see through silliness—and then, the moment that Father’s heirs are united in their unbelief, the floodgates open.”
“You might as well blame my mother, then. After all, she gave birth to me.”
“Oh, I think there is blame before you. I found out, for instance, that Bego has been part of a longtime conspiracy against Akmaro’s teachings. If you search your memory honestly, I wonder if you won’t find that it was Bego who led you to your ‘discovery’ of the nonexistence of the Keeper.”
“Bego isn’t part of anything. He lives for his books. He lives in the past.”
“And your father was inventing a new future, doing away with the past. Yes, Bego would hate that, wouldn’t he? And he’s never believed in the Keeper, I realize that now—insisting on a natural explanation for everything. No miracles, please—remember him saying that over and over? No miracles. The people of Akmaro escaped because it was in the best interest of the digger guards to let them go. The Keeper didn’t make them sleep. Did anybody see them sleeping? No, Akmaro simply dreamed a dream. Go with the simplest explanation every time, that’s what he taught us.”
“He taught us that because it’s true. It’s intellectually honest.”
“Honest? Akma, the simplest explanation of most of these stories is that the Keeper sends true dreams. The Keeper intervenes sometimes in people’s lives. To avoid believing that you have to come up with the most convoluted, twisted, insulting speculations. You dare to tell me that my dream was only significant because it reminded people of the Zenifi, not because I was actually able to tell the difference between a true dream and a normal one. In order to disbelieve in the Keeper, you had to believe that I was and continue to be a self-deceptive fool.”
“Not a fool,” he said, with real pain in his expression. “You were a child. It seemed real to you then. So of course you remember it as being real.”
“You see? What you call intellectual honesty I call self-deception. You won’t believe me, when I stand before you in flesh and blood and declare to you what I saw—”
“What you hallucinated among the dreams of the night.”
“Nor will you even believe the simple truth of what the ancient records say—that the Rasulum, just like the Nafari, were brought back to Earth after millions of years of exile on another world. No, you can’t stick with the simple explanation that the people who wrote these things actually knew what they were talking about. You have to decide that the books were created by later writers who simply wrote down old legends that accounted for the divinity of the Heroes by claiming that they came from the heavens. Nothing can be read straight. Everything has to be twisted to fit your one, basic article of faith that there is no Keeper. You can’t know it! You have no proof of it! And yet faith in that one premise—against which you have a thousand written witnesses and at least a dozen living ones, including me—faith in that one premise leads you to set in motion the chain of events that lea
ds to children being mutilated in the streets of the cities and villages of Darakemba.”
“Is this why you came?” asked Akma. “To tell me that my disbelief in your true dream really hurts your feelings? I’m sorry. I had hoped you would be mature enough to understand that reason has to triumph over superstition.”
She hadn’t touched him. Hadn’t reached that spark of decency hidden deep inside. Because there was no such spark, she knew that now. He rejected the Keeper, not because he was hurt so badly as a child, but because he truly hated the world the Keeper wanted to create. He loved evil; that’s why he no longer loved her.
Without another word, she turned to go.
“Wait,” he said.
She stopped; foolishly, she allowed another spark of hope to brighten.
“It’s not in my power to stop these persecutions, but your father can.”
“You think he hasn’t tried?”
“He’s going about it all wrong,” said Akma. “The civil guard won’t enforce the law. So many of them are actually involved in the Unkept.”
“Why don’t you name names?” said Edhadeya. “If you truly meant what you said about wanting to stop the cruelty—”
“The men I know are all old and none of them are going out beating up children. Are you going to listen to me?”
“If you have a plan, I’ll take it to Father.”
“It’s simple enough. The reason the Unkept feel such rage is because they only have two choices, either to join in with a state religion that forces them to associate with lower creatures—don’t argue with me, I’m telling you what they think—”
“You think the same—”
“You’ve never listened to me long enough to know what I think, and it doesn’t matter anyway. Listen now. They are rebelling out of a sense of helpless rage. They can’t strike at the king, but they can strike at the priests and the diggers. But what if the king decreed that there no longer was a state religion?”
“Abolish the Houses of the Keeper!”
“Not at all. Let the Kept continue to assemble and share their beliefs and rituals—but on a completely voluntary basis. And let others who believe differently form their own assemblies, and without anyone’s interference have their rituals and teachings. As many assemblies, as many beliefs as people want. And the government will simply look on and interfere with none of them.”
“A nation should be of one heart and mind,” said Edhadeya.
“My father destroyed all hope of that thirteen years ago,” said Akma. “Let the king declare religious belief and assembly a private matter, with no public interest at all, and there will be peace.”
“In other words, in order to save the Kept from attack, we should remove the last protections we have?”
“They have no protections, Edhadeya. You know it. The king knows it. He has found the limits of his authority. But once he has abolished all government sponsorship of a religion, he can make a law that no one can be persecuted because of their religious beliefs. That one will have teeth, because it will protect everyone equally. If the Unkept want to form an assembly of fellow believers, they will have protection. It will be in their interest to uphold that law. No more secret meetings. No more hidden societies. Everything out in the open. Suggest it to your father. Even if you don’t think my idea has merit, he will. He’ll see that it’s the only way.”
“He won’t be fooled any more than I am,” said Edhadeya. “This decree you propose is exactly what you’ve wanted all along.”
“I didn’t even think of it till yesterday,” said Akma.
“Oh, pardon, I forgot that it took Bego a certain amount of time to get you to think up his ideas as if they were your own.”
“Edhadeya, if my father’s religion can’t hold its own by the sheer power of its truthfulness, without any help from the government except to protect its members from violence, then it doesn’t deserve to survive.”
“I’ll tell Father what you said.”
“Good.”
“But I’ll also wager you right now, any stakes you say, that within a year you yourself will be the direct cause of more persecution of the Kept.”
“You never knew me, if you think that’s even possible.”
“Oh, you’ll have a lot of high-sounding reasons why people’s suffering isn’t your doing, because you’ve already proven your ability to deceive yourself without limit. But within a year, Akma, families will be weeping because of you.”
“My family, probably, since they mourn for me as if I were dead,” said Akma. He laughed, as if this were a joke.
“They aren’t the only ones,” said Edhadeya.
“I’m not dead,” said Akma. “I have compassion, regardless of what you choose to believe about me. I remember my own suffering, I remember the suffering of others. I also remember that I loved you.”
“I wish you’d forget it,” said Edhadeya. “If it was ever true, you spoiled it long ago.”
“I still do,” he said. “I love you as much as I can love anyone. I think of you all the time, of the joy it would bring me if just once I could have you stand by my side the way Mother stands beside Father in all he does.”
“She can do that, because what he does is good.”
Akma nodded. “I know. Just don’t pretend it’s because of my beliefs that we aren’t together. You’re as stubborn as I am.”
“No, Akma,” she said. “I’m not stubborn. I’m just honest. I can’t deny what I know.”
“But you can hide what you know,” said Akma, with a bitter smile.
“What does that mean?”
“In this whole conversation, you never bothered to mention to me that my sister is going to marry the most loathsome human being I ever knew.”
“I assumed that your family had told you.”
“I had to hear about it from Khimin.”
“I’m sorry. That was Luet’s choice. I’m sure. Perhaps she wanted not to cause you pain.”
“She’s dead to me now,” said Akma. “She has given herself to the torturers and rejected me. As far as I’m concerned, you’re doing the same.”
“It’s you that have given yourself to the torturers, Akma, and rejected me. Didul is no torturer. He is the man you should have been. What Luet loves in him is what she used to love in you. But it isn’t there anymore.”
Graciously, he allowed her the last word, staring off into space as she left the room.
A few minutes later, Bego and Mon heard terrible noises of crashing and breaking and rushed into the library, where they found Akma smashing stools against the table, splintering them. He was weeping, wordlessly sobbing, and they watched in horror as he roared like an animal and shattered every stick of small furniture in the room.
Mon noticed, though, that before his tirade began, he had carefully placed on a shelf all the barks he had been working on. Akma might have given himself over to rage, but he hadn’t forgotten himself so completely as to waste the day’s study.
Later, Akma offered a short and surly explanation. His sister was marrying one of the torturers. He wouldn’t utter the name, but Mon knew that Luet had been in Bodika for the past few weeks and it wasn’t hard to guess. Didul meant nothing to Mon. What hit him, hard, was the news that Luet was marrying at all. He had thought . . . he had meant to . . . when all this was over. When things were settled. When he wasn’t ashamed to face her anymore. That was it, he realized now. That’s why he was waiting. Because he couldn’t talk to her, couldn’t tell her how he felt, not when he had denied his truthsense. Not when every word he uttered was tainted by lies.
Not lies. They aren’t lies; the things Akma and I believe are true. This feeling I have is an illusion, I know it is. I just couldn’t bring myself to face Luet when I still had this feeling that I was a fraud. I just needed more time, more strength. More courage.
Now it doesn’t matter. Now my conscience can be clear as I attack Akmaro’s religion. When Father decrees that all religions are equal,
that all assemblies have the protection of law, then we will go out in the open and everything will be clear. It’s good that I don’t have any bonds of affection to complicate matters. It’s good that I go into this side by side with my brothers, with my friend, not dragged down by a woman who can’t rise above that inner voice she has been trained to think of as the Keeper of Earth. Luet would have been wrong for me. I would have been wrong for her.
I would have been wrong for her. It was when that thought crossed his mind that finally the truthsense within him gave him a sense of calm. He was right, finally, in the eyes of the Keeper.
This was the most devastating realization of all: If the Keeper turned out to exist after all, he had judged Mon and found him unworthy to have the love of the woman he once wanted. But Mon couldn’t escape the nagging doubt that if he hadn’t been caught up in these plans of Akma’s, things might have worked out differently. Would it have been so terrible to keep believing in the Keeper and to have Luet as my wife and live on in peace? Why couldn’t Akma just leave me alone?
He drove these disloyal thoughts out of his mind, and said nothing of his feelings to anyone.
TEN
ANCIENT WAYS
Akma looked for Bego all morning, but couldn’t find him. He needed Bego’s advice; the king had summoned him, and Akma had no idea what he might face. If he were to be charged with a crime, would Motiak call him into his private chamber like this? Akma needed counsel, and the only ones who could give it knew less than he did. Well, Aronha actually knew more about the running of the kingdom—knew more than anybody, since he had been training his whole life for it. But all Aronha could tell him was that he didn’t think Akma was in any danger. “Father isn’t the kind to bring you into chambers to charge you with a crime. He does things like that in the open, using normal process. It’s got to be about the decree you suggested to Edhadeya last night.”
Earthborn (Homecoming) Page 31
