“The Keeper assigned that to me; if I hadn’t done it, she would have found another way, given the task to someone else.”
“Maybe she did. But if I hadn’t been there, the Keeper wouldn’t have thought his life was so important that she would have sent someone else. So it was less significant—but because of that, I know that it happened only because I wanted it to happen. That makes it mine. My gift. Oh, I know it was the Keeper who brought me to Earth at all, and the Keeper who chose me to succeed Nafai as the starmaster so I was even alive then, all of that, I know it. But I’m the one who decided to be there at that time and to risk exposing who I really am to save that boy. So maybe that’s what I’ll think of with pride when I die. Or maybe it’ll be the strange marriage I had with Zdorab. Or Rasaro’s House—that school might last, and that would be something fine.”
“But I am tired. I think I can sleep now. Too cold to sleep out here. I really wish the seats reclined farther back in the launch.”
“And they deserve to be, too, the thoughtless weasels.” She laughed. “I am tired.”
She finished her count anyway, so that her report would be complete. Then she had the launch turn off its exterior lights and she returned to it by starlight and closed the door and went to sleep.
Went to sleep and dreamed. Many dreams, the normal dreams, the random firings of synapses in the brain, being given fragmentary meaning by the story-making functions of the mind; dreams that the mind doesn’t even bother to remember upon waking.
And then, suddenly, a different dream. The Oversoul sensed it, the fact that the brain had now assumed a different pattern from the normal dreamsleep. Shedemei herself felt the difference and, even in her sleep, paid attention.
She saw the Earth as it looked from the Basilica, the curve of the planet plainly visible at the horizons. Then, suddenly, she was seeing the seething magma that roiled underneath the crust of the planet. At first it looked chaotic, but then with piercing clarity she understood that there was magnificent order to the flow of the currents. Each eddy, each whorl, each stream had meaning. Much of it was grossly slow, but here and there, on a small scale, the movements were quick indeed.
Then she knew without seeing, knew because she knew, that these currents gave shape to the magnetic field of the Earth, making both large and tiny variations that could be sensed by the animals, that could disturb them or soothe them. The warning before the earthquake. The sudden veering of a school of fish. The harmonies between organisms; this was what the ravelers saw.
She saw how mind and memory lived in the currents of flowing stone, in the magnetic flow; saw how vast amounts of information were deposited in crystals on the underside of the crust, changed by fluxes in temperature and magnetism. For a moment she thought: This is the Keeper.
Almost at once the answer came: You have not seen the Keeper of Earth. But you have seen my home, my library, and some of my tools. I can’t show you more than this because your mind has no way to receive what I really am. Is this enough?
Yes, said Shedemei silently.
At once the dream changed. She saw all at once more than forty worlds that had been colonized from Earth, and all of them were being watched by some kind of Oversoul, and all the Oversouls were being watched by the Keeper. In particular she saw Harmony, the millions of people as if for just this moment her mind had the capacity to know them all at once. She felt herself in contact with the other iteration of the Oversoul that still lived there; but no, that was illusion, there was no such connection. Yet she knew that it was time for the Oversoul of Harmony to allow the humans there to recover their lost technologies. That’s how the Oversoul would be rebuilt—by humans who had regained their hands.
It’s time, said the clear voice of the Keeper in the dream. Let them build new starships and come home.
What about the people here? asked Shedemei. Have you given up on them?
The time of clarity has come. The decision will be made, one way or the other. So I can send for the people of Harmony now, because by the time they get here, either the three species will be living in perfect peace, or their pride will have broken them and made them ripe for domination by those who come after.
Like the Rasulum, thought Shedemei.
They also had their moment of choice, the Keeper replied.
The dream changed again, and now she saw Akma and the sons of Motiak walking along a road. She knew at once exactly where the road was, and what time of day it would be when they reached that point.
In the dream she saw the launch drop out of the sky, deliberately raising a cloud of smoke under it when it landed; she saw herself stride out, the cloak of the starmaster dazzlingly bright so that they couldn’t bear to look at her. She began to speak, and at that moment the earth shook under them, driven by the currents of magma, and the young men fell to the ground. Then the quaking of the earth ended, and she spoke again, and at last she understood what it was the Keeper needed her to do.
Will you? asked the Keeper.
Will it help? she asked. Will it save these people?
Yes, the Keeper answered. No matter what he chooses, Motiak will finish his days as king of a peaceful kingdom, because of your intervention here. But what happens in the far future—that is what Akma will decide. You may live to see it if you want.
How, if the Basilica must go back to Harmony?
I’m in no hurry here. Have the ship’s computer send a probe. You can stay, and the Oversoul can stay. Don’t you want to see some part of how it ends?
Yes, I do.
I know you do, said the Keeper. Until you made this visit to Earth, I wasn’t sure if you were truly part of me, because I didn’t know if you loved the people enough to share my work. You’re not the same person you were when I first called you here.
I know, said Shedemei in the dream. I used to live for nothing but my work.
Oh, you still do that, and so do I. It’s just that your work has changed, and now it’s the same as my work: to teach the people of Earth how to live, on and on, generation to generation; and how to make that life joyful and free. You made your choice, and so now, like Akmaro, I can give you what you want, because I know that you desire only the joy of these people, forever.
I’m not so pure-hearted as that!
Don’t be confused by your transient feelings. I know what you do; I know why you do it; I can name you more truly than you can name yourself.
For a moment, Shedemei could see herself reaching up and plucking a white fruit from a tree; she tasted it, and the flavor of it filled her body with light and she could fly, she could sing all songs at once and they were endlessly beautiful inside her. She knew what the fruit was—it was the love of the Keeper for the people of Earth. The white fruit was a taste of the Keeper’s joy. Yet also in the flavor of it was something else, the tang, the sharp pain of the millions, the billions of people who could not understand what the Keeper wanted for them, or who, understanding, hated it and rejected her interference in their lives. Let us be ourselves, they demanded. Let us accomplish our accomplishments. We want none of your gifts, we don’t want to be part of your plan. And so they were swept away in the currents of time, belonging to no part of history because they could not be part of something larger than themselves. Yet they had their free choice; they were not punished except by the natural consequence of their own pride. Thus even in rejecting the Keeper’s plan they became a part of it; in refusing to taste the fruit of the tree, they became part of its exquisite flavor. There was honor even in that. Their hubris mattered, even though in the long flow of burning history it changed nothing. It mattered because the Keeper loved them and remembered them
and knew their names and their stories and mourned for them: O my daughter, O my son, you are also part of me, the Keeper cried out to them. You are part of my endless yearning, and I will never forget you—
And the emotions became too much for Shedemei. She had dwelt in the Keeper’s mind for as long as she could bear. She awoke sobbing violently, overwhelmed, overcome. Awoke and uttered a long mournful cry of unspeakable grief—grief for the lost ones, grief for having had to leave the mind of the Keeper, grief because the taste of the white fruit was gone from her lips and it had only been a dream after all. A true dream, but a dream that ends, it ended, and here I am more alone than I ever was before because for the first time in my life I had the experience of being not alone and I never knew, I never knew how beautiful it was to be truly, wholly known and loved. Her cry trailed off; her body was spent by the dream; she slept again, and dreamed no more until morning. By then enough time had passed that she could bear to be awake, though the dream was still powerfully present in her mind.
“Did you watch?” she whispered.
“He had different work to do,” she said. “Can you get me to the place where I’m supposed to be?”
She ate as the launch moved, chewing mechanically; the food had no flavor, compared to what she remembered from her dream.
“Your waiting is over at last,” she said between bites. “I assume you saw that.”
“So did I. But I got enough, I think, to last me for a while.”
“I understood why, during the dream,” said Shedemei. “The experience is so overwhelming that if she gave it to most people, they’d be so consumed by it that they wouldn’t own their souls anymore. Their will would be swallowed up in hers. It would kill them, in effect.”
“I’m not. But since I had already chosen to follow the Keeper’s plan, this dream didn’t erase my will, it confirmed who I already was and what I already wanted. I didn’t lose my freedom, and instead of killing me it made me more alive.”
“Yes, that’s right. It’s an organic thing.” She thought for a moment longer, and added, “She said she couldn’t let me see her face, but now I understand that I don’t need to or want to, because I’ve done something better.”
“I’ve worn her face. I’ve seen through her eyes.”
Shedemei held up her hands and looked at them, damp and crumbed from the meal she was just finishing. “Then I would have to say that the Keeper of Earth looks just like me, don’t you think?” She laughed for a moment; the sound was no doubt as raucous as any laugh, but inside herself it awakened the memory of music, and for a moment she remembered the taste of the fruit, and she was content.
TWELVE
VICTORY
When Edhadeya came to see them after their big public meeting in Jatva, it was Mon who went aside with her to hear what she had to say. “If you’ve come to persuade me to break ranks with my brothers,” he began, but she gave him no chance to finish.
“I know you’re already committed to denying everything that was ever noble and good about you, Mon, so I wouldn’t waste my time. Father sent me with a message.”
Mon felt the tiniest thrill of fear and dread. He often found it hard to believe that Father was letting them get away with all the things they were doing. Oh, he had stopped them from organizing the boycott of digger trade and labor, but of course they got around that by pretending to speak against the boycott—everyone understood the real message. Was Father now taking action against them? And if so, why was there something inside Mon that welcomed it? Was it that victory had come to them too easily, and he wanted some kind of contest?
“Are you listening?” asked Edhadeya.
“Yes,” said Mon.
“Father is worried that some of his soldiers might decide that their duty to the king requires them to remove the source of his recent unhappiness. Some chance remarks of his, overheard by others out of context, have given some soldiers the impression that he would welcome this.”
“Sounds to me as though he gave an order and changed his mind a little too late.” Mon laughed nastily.
“You know that isn’t true.”
He did, of course. His truthsense rebelled against the idea—but he was getting better and better at suppressing it.
“What does he think we’re going to do?” asked Mon. “Go into hiding? Stop speaking publicly? He can forget it. Killing us would only make martyrs of us and make our victory complete. Besides, he didn’t raise cowards.”
“Fools, yes, liars, yes, but not cowards.” Edhadeya smiled grimly. “He knows you won’t back down. All he suggested was that you keep your travel plans secret. Don’t tell people where you’re going next. Don’t tell them when you’re going to leave.”
Mon thought about it for a moment. “All right. I’ll tell the others.”
“Then I’ve done my duty.” She turned to leave.
“Wait,” said Mon. “Is that all? No other messages? Nothing personal from you?”
“Nothing but my loathing, which I freely give to all five of you, but with a special extra dose for you, Mon, since I know that you know that Akma is wrong with every word he says. Akma may be doing most of the talking, but you are the most dishonest one, because you know the truth.”
Mon started to explain again about how his childish truthsense was pure illusion designed to win attention for the second son of the king, but before he was well launched into it, she slapped his face.
“Not to me,” she said. “You can tell that to anyone else and they can believe it if they want, but never say it to me. The insult is unbearable.”
This time when she walked away, melting into the dispersing crowd, he didn’t call her back. The stinging of his cheek had brought tears to his eyes, but he wasn’t sure if it was just the pain that had done it. He thought back to those wonderful days when he was young and Edhadeya was his dearest friend. He remembered how she trusted him to take her true dream to Father, and because of Aronha’s absolute trust in his truthsense, he had won a hearing and an expedition was launched and the Zenifi were rescued. He had believed in those days that this would be his place in the kingdom, to be Aronha’s most trusted counselor because Aronha would know that Mon could not lie. And the time when Bego used him to help translate the Rasulum leaves. . . .
Funny, now that he thought of it with the sting of Edhadeya’s slap still in his face, how Bego didn’t believe in the Keeper, but he still used Mon to help him with the translation. Wasn’t it Bego, really, who taught them all to disbelieve in the Keeper? But Bego believed. Or at least believed in Mon’s gift.
No, no, Akma already explained that. Bego didn’t think of it as a gift from the Keeper, he thought of it as an innate talent in Mon himself. That’s right, the ability to sense when people really believed what they were saying. It had nothing to do with absolute truth, and everything to do with absolute belief.
But if that’s the case, thought Mon, why don’t I ever get a sense that a single thing that Akma says is true? I haven’t really got the logic of that straight. If my truthsense came from the Keeper, then the Keeper might be trying to turn me against Akma by refusing to confirm anything he says. But then, that would mean there really was a Keeper, so that can’t be the reason. At the same time, if Akma is right and my truthsense
is merely my own ability to tell when people are certain that they’re telling the truth, what does that say about my complete lack of confirmation concerning Akma’s words? It means that no matter how convincing he sounds—and don’t I get caught up in his speeches the way the crowd does, swept along and utterly persuaded?—my truthsense still says that he’s lying. He doesn’t believe a word he’s saying. Or if he believes it, it’s like an opinion, not like a certainty. At the core of him, in his heart, in the deepest places in his mind, he isn’t saying these things because he is sure of them.
So what does Akma believe? And why am I denying my truthsense in favor of Akma’s uncertainties?
No, no, I already went through this with Akma, and he explained that a truly educated man never believes anything with certainty because he knows that further learning might challenge any or all of his beliefs; therefore I will only get a strong response from my truthsense about people who are ignorant or fanatical.
Ignorant or fanatical . . . like Edhadeya? Bego?
“Well, what did she want?” asked Aronha.
Mon’s reverie had carried him back to where his brothers and Akma were speaking with the leaders of the local Assembly of the Ancient Ways. This was the part of founding a religion that bothered Mon the most. While they got plenty of donations from rich and educated people, the ones who actually were willing to take the time to govern the assembly weren’t people that Mon much cared for. A lot of them were former priests who had lost their jobs back at the time of the reforms—an arrogant bunch that thought themselves a sort of wronged aristocracy, full of grievance and conceit. Others, though, were the kind of digger-hating bigots that, in Mon’s opinion, were almost certainly the very men who either carried out or ordered the cruel mistreatment of the Kept during the persecutions. It made his skin crawl to have to associate with them. Aronha had privately confessed to Mon that he hated dealing with these people, too. “Whatever else we might say about Akmaro,” Aronha commented then, “he certainly attracts a better grade of priest.” They could never say this in front of Akma, however, since he still became very upset at any reminder of Luet’s marriage to the priest Didul, and to praise the priests of the Kept as a class would surely cause an eruption of Akma’s temper.
Earthborn (Homecoming) Page 37
