Earthborn (Homecoming)
Page 39
“I’m not proud,” said Aronha, and now his voice was trembling. “I can’t stand the thought of facing anybody.”
“But we will,” said Mon. “Because we have to let them see what a miserable bunch we are.”
“Isn’t that a kind of pride, too?” asked Ominer nastily.
“Maybe it is, Ominer! But you want to know the one thing I’m really proud of? The one thing that makes me glad that you’re my brothers, that I’m one of you?”
“What?” said Aronha.
“That not one of you suggested that we go on fighting the Keeper,” said Mon. “That it didn’t cross your minds that maybe we could remain a part of the Assembly of the Ancient Ways.”
“That doesn’t mean we’re good or anything,” said Ominer. “It might just mean we’re terrified.”
“We could only rebel when we could fool ourselves into thinking that we believed there was no Keeper. Now we know better. We’ve seen things that we never imagined, things that happened only in the time of the Heroes. But remember those stories? Elemak and Mebbekew saw things every bit as strong as this! And yet they kept rebelling, right to the end of their lives. Not us! Our rebellion is over.”
Aronha nodded. “I still meant what I said about being Aron now.”
Mon shot back at once, “You’ll stay Aronha until Father tells you otherwise! He didn’t take away the honorific the whole time you were shaming him.”
Aronha nodded again.
“This will kill Mother,” Khimin said, weeping.
Mon put his arm around his youngest brother and held him. “I don’t know if we can decently ask Father to take us back. But we have to go to him, if only so he can have the victory of turning us away.”
“Father will take us back,” said Aronha. “That’s the kind of man he is. The question is whether we can undo any of the harm we’ve caused.”
“No,” said Ominer. “The question is, will Akma live or not? We have to get him back to Darakemba. Do we keep him here and hope that he’ll revive? Or search for help to carry him back?”
“There are four of us,” said Khimin. “We can carry him.”
“I’ve heard that Shedemei the schoolmaster is a healer,” said Mon.
“Now we need help from a woman we referred to as a criminal mixer of species,” said Aronha bitterly. “In our time of need, it doesn’t cross our minds to turn to our own Assembly of the Ancient Ways. We know, we always knew, that the only help we can count on will be found among the Kept.”
Shame tasted foul in their mouths as they made a litter for Akma out of their coats and staves, then lifted the staves to their shoulders to carry him. As they neared more settled country, people ran out to see them, these four men carrying what seemed to be a corpse on their shoulders, as if to take him to be buried.
“Go,” Aronha said to them—said to everyone who came out to meet them. “Go and tell everyone that the Keeper sent a messenger to strike down the Motiaki and stop them from telling their lies. We are the sons of Motiak, and we return in shame to our father. Go and tell everyone that Akma, the son of Akmaro, has been struck down by the messenger of the Keeper, and whether he will live or die no one can say!”
Over and over he said these things, and every time that the words were said to one of the Kept, the response was the same: not rejoicing, not gloating, not condemnation, but tears and embraces and then, inevitably, the most unbearable thing of all: “Can we help you? Can we carry Akma for a little way? Oh, his father and mother will weep to see him like this! We will pray to the Keeper to let them see their son alive again! Let us help you!” They brought water to them, brought them food, and not once did any of the Kept reprove them.
Others were not so kind. Men and women who had no doubt cheered for Akma and the sons of Motiak during their speeches now shouted bitter denunciations, calling them liars, frauds, heretics. “Arondi! Mondi! Ominerdi! Khimindi!” How bitter it was that while they really were rebelling against their father, no one dared to put the term for traitor in their names; but now that they had ended their rebellion and confessed their wrongdoing, the epithet was heaped upon them.
“It’s what we deserve,” Mon said, when Ominer began to point out the hypocrisy of their accusers.
And then, gallingly, they had to watch and listen as the Kept took the shouters aside and rebuked them. “Don’t you see that they’re filled with grief? Can’t you see that Akma is nearly dead? They’re doing you no harm now, let them pass, give them peace.”
Thus the Kept became their protectors on their journey. And many of them were diggers. Mon was not content to let Aronha’s speeches be all they heard. To the diggers, Mon added his own message. “Please, go and find the earth people who are on the road, leaving Darakemba. Tell them that we beg them to come home. Tell them that they are better citizens of Darakemba than the sons of Motiak. Don’t let them leave.”
They slept beside Akma that night on the road, and late the next day they reached Darakemba. Word had gone ahead of them, and when they got to Akma’s house, a huge crowd parted to let them through, and Akmaro and Chebeya stood in the doorway to receive the almost-living body of their son. Inside the house the king their father waited, and their sister Edhadeya, and they wept at how lovingly their father and sister embraced them, and wept again as Akmaro and Chebeya knelt over the ruins of their son.
On the road, the being of light appeared. The earth trembled. Akma should have been surprised but he was not. It was the strangest thing, that it did not feel strange to him. As the messenger spoke, what kept running through Akma’s mind was the thought, What took you so long?
As soon as he noticed his own lack of surprise, he wondered at it. He couldn’t have been expecting anything like this. He didn’t know that any being like this existed. Certainly in his scholarship he had never come up with any such thing. Besides, experience proved nothing. This could be nothing more than a hallucination shared by a group of five men who were in desperate need of some affirmation of their importance to the universe. Instead of proving that there really was a Keeper of Earth, this experience might prove nothing more than the inescapable unconscious power of childhood belief, even over men who thought they had outgrown it.
But as the messenger kept speaking (and how can I hear every word and still have time to think all these thoughts? What extraordinary clarity of mind. I’d like to tell Bego about this phenomenon. What did the king end up doing to Bego, anyway? Look at this—I go off on a tangent, wondering about Bego, and yet I haven’t missed a word of the message) Akma knew that this was not a shared hallucination, or that if it was, it was a hallucination induced by the Keeper of Earth, because this was definitely sent from outside himself. Why did he know that? It was as Edhadeya said, you simply know the difference when it has happened to you. Only it isn’t the being of light that’s doing it. No, that’s just a show, just a spectacle. It isn’t having my eyes dazzled or the earth shaking under my feet or great roaring noises or smoke or a strange-sounding voice that makes me sure. I simply . . . know.
And then he thought: I always knew.
He remembered back to the time when he was in the greatest terror of his life—when the sons of Pabulog first threw him down and began to torture him and humiliate him. He couldn’t have put it into words at the time, but underneath the fear for his life, there was shame at his helplessness; and underneath that there was steely courage that made him try not to beg for mercy, that sustained him through it all and allowed him to walk, naked and smeared with mud and filth and ruined food, back to his people. He knew at the time what that strength was—it was the absolute certainty of the love of his parents (and the memory of it stabbed him; I had their love, I still have their love, it was as firm as I believed even as a little boy, my faith was not misplaced, and look what I’ve done to them), a sense of the unbreakable cords that bound them together, almost as if he had the raveling skill of his mother without ever having noticed it consciously.
And yet underneath t
hat there was something else. A sense that someone was watching everything that happened, watching and saying, What these boys are doing to you is wrong. The love your parents have for you is right. Your weeping, your shame, they are not flaws in you, you can’t help it. Your effort at courage is worthy. It is right for you to go back to your people. A constant judge, assessing the moral value of what he was doing. How could he now remember something that he hadn’t noticed at the time? And yet he knew without doubt that this watcher had been there at the time, and that he had loved this voice inside him, because when he did well it said so.
The messenger was saying, “The Keeper has heard the pleas of the Kept, and also the plea of your father, the true servant of the Keeper.” How long had the speech gone on? Not long at all; it was barely begun, really, he could tell. It was as if he knew every word the messenger would say and how long was allotted to each part of the message, so that his mind could divide its attention between little slices required to hear and understand the words, and great long passages of time between those slices in which he could search out this mystery, this observer that he had had within him all these years and never noticed.
He saw himself sitting on a hillside watching Father teach the Pabulogi. He felt the rage inside his boyish heart, heard himself vowing revenge. But on whom? Now he could see what he had not seen then: What he was raging at was not the Pabulogi at all, and not even his father for teaching them. No, the betrayal that stung him to the heart was against all of them and none of them—it was against the Keeper of Earth for daring to save the people without using Akma as his instrument.
And what was that secret inner watcher saying then? Nothing. Nothing at all. It had withdrawn. It was silent within him while his heart was filled with rage at not having been chosen.
I drove it away. I was empty then.
But no, not completely empty, for now he could sense it like the softest possible sound, the tiniest possible mark, the dimmest possible star that could still be seen at all. The watcher was still there, and it was quietly saying, It was not your time, it was not your time, be patient, the plan is larger than you, I needed others this time, your time will come. . . .
So the watcher was there, but had no effect on him, because his own rage drowned it out.
And now, looking inside himself, he realized that the watcher was still inside him, still speaking, like a voice behind the voice of his mind, offering perpetual commentary on every conscious thought but always fleeing from consciousness itself whenever he tried to seize the elusive wisdom. Even now he could only remember the comment that had just passed, not hear the one that was happening right now.
Now you know me, the watcher had just said. You knew me all along, but now you know that you know me.
Yes, said Akma silently in reply. You are the Keeper of Earth, and you have been part of me all along. You have been like a spark kept alive inside me no matter how I tried to put that fire out, no matter how often I denied you, there you were.
“Their pleas will be answered,” the messenger was saying, “whether you choose to destroy yourself or not.” And with that the message ended. The bright arm reached out to point to him. The finger crackled and hissed and a terrible pain touched every nerve in his body at once, he was entirely on fire, and in that moment of exquisite agony he could remember what the watcher, what the Keeper, had just . . . finished . . . saying. . . .
Now you know me, Akma. And now I’m gone.
Until that moment, Akma could not have imagined a more terrible pain than the suffering of his body as the messenger’s bolt of power touched all his nerves at once. But now that pain had ended and Akma’s body lay crumpled on the ground, and he understood that the pain of his body was nothing, it hadn’t even touched him, it was almost a pleasure compared to . . .
Compared to perfect solitude.
He was connected to nothing. He had no name because there was no one to know him, no place because he was connected to nothing, no power because there was nothing on which he could act. Yet he knew that once he had had these things and now they were torn from him; he was lost and would never be anything or anyone again; he was lost because no one knew him. Where is the one who watches? Where is the one who knows me? Where is the one who names me? I only just found him inside me, didn’t I? How could he have left me now?
There was no pain compared to this loss. He wouldn’t mind being restored to the agonized body he had been connected to only a few moments ago, because it was better to feel that pain, with the watcher judging him, than to feel this utter lack of pain, with no one watching him. When I felt the pain I was part of something; now I am part of nothing.
Didn’t I want this? To be only myself, responsible to no one, uncommanded, uncontrolled, unexpected, free? I didn’t know what it meant till now, to owe nothing to anyone, to have no duty because I had no power to act. I didn’t realize that utter independence was the most terrible punishment.
All my life the Keeper was inside me, judging me. But now the judging is over. I was not fit to be part of the Keeper’s world.
As he knew this, the reasons for his knowledge began to come into his mind. Images that he had refused to imagine before now came to him with perfect reality. An old digger woman being set upon and beaten by human men, tall and terrifying; and because Akma was inside her, all her memories flooded over him and he knew all the meanings of this moment. When his comprehension of the old woman’s suffering was complete, he suddenly passed into the mind of one of the thugs, and now he was no longer a thug, but a man, sickened by his own action yet still hot-blooded from violence, not daring to voice his own self-contempt because then he would be shamed in front of . . .
And in that moment Akma was inside the man whose admiration the thug had treasured, and saw his sense of pride and power at having set in motion the dark events that terrorized the Kept. He was hungry for power, and loved having it now, for now they would have to think of him when they wanted something done, they would respect him. . . .
And now the “they” in the plotter’s mind took on a shape, several shapes, rich old men who had once been influential in the kingdom but now were only important in Darakemba, for the kingdom had outgrown their petty reach. When Aronha is king, he’ll know that my influence is valuable. I can accomplish the things that are too dark for him to do with his own hands. I will not be despised, when the new king comes.
It took no further explanation for Akma to understand, for wasn’t he the one who captured the hearts and minds of the sons of Motiak, who united them against the policies of his own father and the king? The certainty in his mind was unassailable: This old woman would not have been beaten if I had not deliberately given others cause to think that they would gain some advantage through cruelty to the Kept. The chain of cause was long, but it was not false, and the worst thing was that Akma knew that he had known it all along, that in his hatred and envy of the Keeper’s power he had, in fact, longed for violent and cruel action and, instead of doing it with his own hands, had flung his power out into the world and caused other hands to do what he wanted done.
This is what the Keeper does, to accomplish his good works: casts his influence out into the world and gives people encouragement for their good impulses. The watcher that was present in me is present in every living soul; no one is alone; everyone is touched by those gentle words of affirmation when they do what the Keeper asks: Well done, my good child, my faithful friend, my willing servant. My own power was but a small part of what the Keeper has, a dim shadow of his influence—but instead of using it to make other people a bit more happy, a bit more free, I used it to kindle the avarice and envy in some hearts, who then fanned the flames of violence in others. I was inside their hearts when they struck, and my voice, even though they didn’t know it was my voice, was saying, Break, tear, hurt, destroy. She is not part of the world that we are building; drive her out. Those I used as my hands in this dirty business were also responsible for their own actions, but
that does not absolve me. For those who do good, do it with the Keeper inside them, urging them on, praising them for their kindness—yet the Keeper does not make them do it. The good works are their own, and also they are the Keeper’s. So also were the cruelties of these dark-hearted men their own, and yet mine as well. Mine.
No sooner had he understood his own role in the beating of that one old woman than a new cruelty came into his mind, a child who cried out in hunger and had nothing to eat because his father had lost his income in the boycott; Akma saw through the child’s eyes, and then through the father’s, feeling his shame and despair at being unable to give his child relief, and then Akma was the mother in her impotent rage and her complaints against the Keeper and the Kept for having brought this down upon them, and again he followed the chain of suffering and evil—the merchants who once had bought the father’s goods, who now refused to buy, some out of fear of reprisal, some out of a personal bias against diggers that now had become respectable—no, patriotic!—because Akma had stood before a crowd and told them that they must all obey the law and not boycott anybody and the audience had laughed because they understood what Akma wanted. . . .
He wanted the child to weep and the father’s pride to break and the mother’s loyalty to the Kept to burn out in helpless fury. He wanted this because he had to punish the Keeper for not choosing him back when he was a child desperate to save his little sister from the lash.
Over and over, time after time, scene after scene, he saw all the pain he had caused. How long did it last? It could have been a single minute; it could have been a dozen lifetimes. How could he measure it, having no connection to reality, no sense of time? He saw it all, however long it took; and yet each moment of it was also eternal, because his understanding was so complete.
If he could have made a sound, it would have been an endless scream. It was unbearable to be alone; and worst of all was that in his solitude he had to be with himself, with all his loathsome, contemptible actions.