The Memory of Earth

by Orson Scott Card

  For a moment he toyed with the idea of going to Luet and asking her questions. She knew about the Oversoul, didn't she? She saw visions all the time, not just once, like Father. Surely she could explain.

  But she was a woman, and at this moment Nafai knew that he'd get no help of any kind from women. On the contrary-women in Basilica were taught from child- hood on how to oppress men and make them feel worthless. Luet would laugh at him and go straight to Mother to tell her about his questions.

  If he could trust anyone in this, it would be other -men-and precious few of them, since the danger to Father was coming from Gaballufix's party. Perhaps he could enlist the help of this Roptat that Elya had talked about. Or find out something about what the Oversoul was doing in the first place.

  Issib wasn't thrilled to see him. "I'm busy and I don't need interruptions."

  "This is the household library," said Nafai. "This is where we always come to do research."

  "See? You're interrupting already."

  "Look, I didn't say anything, I just came in here, and you started picking at me the second I walked in the door."

  "I was hoping you'd walk back out."

  "I can't. Mother sent me here." Nafai walked over behind Issib, who was floating comfortably in the air in front of his computer display. It was layered about thirty pages deep, but each page had only a few words on it, so he could see almost everything at once. Like a game of solitaire, in which Issib was simply moving fragments from place to place.

  The fragments were all words in weird languages. The ones Nafai recognized were very old.

  "What language is th a t?" Nafai asked, pointing to one.

  Issib sighed. "I'm so glad you're not interrupting me."

  "What is it, some ancient form of Vijati?"

  "Very good. It's Slucajan, which came from Obilazati, the original form of Vijati. It's dead now."

  "I read Vijati, you know."

  " Idon't,"

  "Oh, so you're specializing in ancient, obscure languages that nobody speaks anymore, including you?"

  "I'm not learning these languages, I'm researching lost words."

  "If the whole language is dead, then all the words are lost."

  "Words that used to have meanings, but that died out or survived only in idiomatic expressions. Like ‘dancing bear.' What's a bear^ do you know?"

  "I don't know. I always thought it was some kind of graceful bird."

  "Wrong. It's an ancient mammal. Known only on Earth, I think, and not brought here. Or it died out soon. It was bigger than a man, very powerful. A predator."

  "And it danced ?"

  "The expression used to mean something absurdly clumsy. Like a dog walking on its hind legs."

  "And now it means the opposite. That's weird. How could it change?"

  "Because there aren't any bears. The meaning used to be obvious, because everybody knew what a bear was and how clumsy it would look, dancing. But when the bears were gone, the meaning could go anywhere. Now we use it for a person who's extremely deft in getting out of an embarrassing social situation. It's the only case where we use the word bear anymore. And you see a lot of people misspelling it, too."

  "Great stuff. You doing a linguistics project?"

  "No."

  "What's this for, then?"

  "Me."

  "Just collecting old idioms."

  "Lost words."

  "Like bear? The word isn't lost, Issya. It's the bears that are gone."

  "Very good, Nyef. You get full credit for the assignment. Go away now."

  "You're not researching lost words. You're researching words that have lost their meanings because the thing they refer to doesn't exist anymore."

  Issya slowly turned his head to look at Nafai. "You mean that you've actually developed a brain?"

  Nafai pointed at the screen. "Kolesnisha. That's a word in Kunic. You've got the meaning right there - war wagon. Kunic hasn't been spoken in ten million years. It's just a written language now. And yet they had a word for war wagon. Which was only just invented. Which means that there used to be war wagons a long time ago."

  Issib laughed. A low chuckle, but it went on and on.

  "What, am I wrong?"

  "It just kills me, that's all. How obvious it is. Even you can just walk up to a computer display and see the whole thing at once. So why hasn't anybody noticed this before? Why hasn't anybody noticed the fact that we had the word wagon already, and we all knew what it meant, and yet as far as we know there have never been any wagons anywhere in the world ever?

  "That's really weird, isn't it?"

  "It isn't weird, it's scary. Look at what the Wetheads are doing with their war wagons - their kolesnishety. It gives them a vital advantage in war. They're building a real empire, not just a system of alliances, but actual control over nations that are six days' travel, away from their city. Now, if war wagons can do that, and people used to have them millions of years ago, how did we ever forget what they were? "

  Nafai thought about that for a while. "You'd have to be really stupid," he said. "I mean, people don't forget things like that. Even if you had peace for a thousand years, you'd still have pictures in the library."

  "No pictures of war wagons," said Issib.

  "I mean, that's stupid," said Nafai.

  "And this word," said Issib.

  "Zrakoplov? said Nafai. "That's definitely an Obilazati word."

  "Right."

  "What does it mean? ‘Air ' something."

  "Broken down and loosely translated, yes, it means ‘air swimmer.'"

  Nafai thought about this for a while. He conjured up a picture in his mind-a fish moving through the air. "A flying fish?"

  "It's a machine," said Issib.

  "A really fast ship?"

  "Listen to yourself, Nafai. It should be obvious to you. And yet you keep resisting the plain meaning of it."‘

  "An underwater boat?"

  "How would that be an air swimmer, Nyef?"

  "I don't know." Nafai felt silly. "I forgot about the air part."

  "You forgot about it-and yet you recognized the ‘air part' right off, by yourself. You knew that Zraky was the Obilazati root for air, and yet you forgot the ‘air part.'"

  "So I'm really, really dumb."

  "But you're not, Nyef. You're really really smart, and yet you're still standing here looking at the word and I'm telling you all this and you still can't think of what the word means."

  "Well, what's this word," said Nafai, pointing ztpuscani prah. "I don't recognize the language."

  Issib shook his head. "If I didn't see it happening to you, I wouldn't believe it."

  "What?"

  "Aren't you even curious to know what a zrakoplov is?"

  "You told me. Air swimmer."

  "A machine whose name is air swimmer."

  "Sure. Right. So what's a puscani prah?"

  Issib slowly turned around and faced Nafai. "Sit down, my dear beloved brilliant stupid brother, thou true servant of the Oversoul. I've got something to tell you about machines that swim through the air."

  "I guess I'm interrupting you," said Nafai.

  "I want to talk to you," said Issib. "It's not an interruption. I just want to explain the idea of flying-"

  Td better go."

  "Why? Why are you so eager to leave?"

  "I don't know." Nafai walked to the door. "I need some air. I'm running out of air." He walked out of the room. Immediately he felt better. Not lightheaded anymore. What was all that about, anyway? The library was too stuffy. Too crowded. Too many people in there,

  "Why did you leave?" asked Issib.

  Nafai whirled. Issib was silently floating out of the library after him. Nafai immediately felt the same kind of claustrophobia that had driven him out into the hall. "Too crowded in there," said Nafai. "I need to be alone."

  "I was the only person in there," said Issib.

  "Really?" Nafai tried to remember. "I want to get outside. Just let me go."r />
  "Think," said Issib. "Remember when Luet and Father were talking yesterday?"

  Immediately Nafai relaxed. He didn't feel claustrophobic anymore. "Sure."

  "And Luet was testing Father-about his memories. When his memory of the vision he saw was wrong, he felt kind of stupid, right?"

  "He said."

  "Stupid. Disconnected. He just stared into space." . "I guess."

  "Like you," said Issib. "When I pushed you about the meaning of zrakoplov"

  Suddenly Nafai felt as if there were no air in his lungs. "I've got to get outside!"

  "You are really sensitive to this," said Issib. "Even worse than Father and Mother when I tried to tell them?

  "Stop following me!" Nafai cried. But Issib continued to float down the hall after him, down the stairs, out into the street. There, in the open, Issib easily passed Nafai, floating here and there in front of him. As if he were herding Nafai back toward the house.

  "Stop it!" cried Nafai. But he couldn't get away. He had never felt such panic before. Turning, he stumbled, fell to his knees.

  "It's all right," said Issib softly. "Relax. It's nothing. Relax."

  Nafai breathed more easily. Issib's voice sounded safe now. The panic subsided. Nafai lifted his head and looked around. "What are we doing out here on the street? Mother's going to kill me."

  "You ran out here, Nafai."

  "I did?"

  "It's the Oversoul, Nafai."

  "What's the Oversoul?"

  "The force that sent you outside rather than listen to me talk about-about the thing that the Oversoul doesn't want people to know about."

  "That's silly," said Nafai. "The Oversoul spreads information, it doesn't conceal it. We submit our writings, our music, everything, and the Oversoul transmits it from city to city, from library to library all over the world."

  "Your reaction was much stronger than Father's," said Issib. "Of course, I pushed you harder, too."

  "What do you mean?"

  "The Oversoul is inside your head, Nafai. Inside all of our heads. But some have it more than others. It's there, watching what we think. I know it's hard to believe."

  But Nafai remembered how Luet had known what was in his mind. "No, Issya, I already knew that."

  "Really?" said Issib. "Well then. As soon as the Over-soul knew that you were getting close to a forbidden subject, it started making you stupid"

  "What forbidden subject?"

  "If I remind you, if it'll just set you off again," said Issib.

  "When did I get stupid?"

  "Trust me. You got very stupid. Trying to change the subject without even realizing it. Normally you're extremely insightful, Nafai. Very bright. You get things. But this time up in the library you just stood there like an idiot, with the truth staring you in the face, and you didn't recognize it. When I reminded you, when I pushed, you got claustrophobic, right? Hard to breathe, had to get out of the room. I followed you, I pushed again, and here we are."

  Nafai tried to think back over what had happened. Issib was right about the order of events. Only Nafai hadn't connected his need to get out of the house with anything Issib said. In fact, he couldn't for the life of him remember what it was that Issib had been talking about. "You pushed?"

  "I know," said Issib. "I felt it, too, when I first started getting on the track of this a couple of years ago. I was playing around with lost words, just like that dancing bear thing. Making lists. I had a l&ng list of terms like that, with definitions and explanations after each one, along with my best guess about what each lost word meant. And then one day I was looking at a list that I thought was complete and I realized that there were a couple of dozen words that had no meanings at all. That's stupid, I thought. That's ruining my list. So I deleted all those words."

  "Deleted them?" Nafai was appalled. "Instead of researching them?"

  "See how stupid it can make you?" said Issib. "And the moment I finished deleting them, it came to me-what am I doing! So I reached for the undelete command, but instead of pushing those keys, I reflexively gave the kill command, completely wiping out the delete buffer, and then I saved the file right over the old one." , "That's too complicated to be clumsiness," said Nafai.

  "Exactly. I knew that deleting them was a mistake, and yet instead of undoing that mistake and bringing the words back, I killed them, wiped them out of the system."

  "And you think the Oversoul did that to you?"

  "Nafai, haven't you ever wondered what the Oversoul is? What it does?"

  "Sure."

  "Me too. And now I know."

  "Because of those words?"

  "I haven't got them all back, but I retraced as much of my research as I could and I got a list of eight words. You have no idea how hard it was, because now I was sensitized to them. Before, I must have simply overlooked them, gotten stupid when I saw them-the way Father did when he was getting wrong ideas about the Oversoul's vision. That's how they got on my first list, but without definitions-I just got stupid whenever I thought of them. But now when I saw them I'd get that claustrophobic feeling. I needed air. I had to get out of the library. But I forced myself to go inside. It's the hardest thing I've ever done. I forced myself to stay and think about the unthinkable. To hold concepts in my mind that the Oversoul doesn't want us to remember.

  Concepts that once were so common that every language in the world has words for them. Ancient words. Lost words."

  "The Oversoul is hiding things from us?"

  "Yes."

  "Like what?"

  "If I tell you, Nafai, you'll take off again."

  "No I won't."

  "You wtil? said Issib. "Do you think I don't know? Do you think I haven't had my own struggle this past year? So you can imagine my surprise when last night Elemak sits there in the kitchen and explains to us about one of the forbidden things. War wagons."

  "Forbidden? How could it be forbidden, it isn't even ancient."

  "See? You've forgotten already. The word kolesnisha"

  "Oh, yes. That's right. No, I remember that."

  "But you didn't till I said it."

  That's right, thought Nafai. A memory lapse.

  "Last night you and Elemak were sitting there talking about war wagons, even though it took me months to be able to study the word kolesnisha without gasping the whole time."

  "But we didn't say kolesnisha."

  "What I'm telling you, Nafai, is that the Oversold is breaking down."

  "That's an old theory."

  "But it's a true one," said Issib. "The Oversoul has certain concepts that it is protecting, that it refuses to let human beings think about. Only in the past few years the Wetheads have suddenly become able to think about one of them. And so have the Potoku. And so have we. And last night, hearing Elemak talk about it, I felt not one twinge of the panic."

  "But it still made me forget the word. Kolesnisha,?

  "A lingering residual effect. You remembered it this time, right? Nafai, the Oversoul has given up on keeping us away from the war wagon concept. After millions of years, it isn't trying anymore."

  "What else?" asked Nafai. "What are the other concepts?"

  "It hasn't given up on those yet. And you seem to be really sensitive to the Oversoul, Nyef. I don't know if I can tell you, or if you'd be able to remember for five minutes even if I did."

  "You mean I can know that the Oversoul is keeping us from knowing things, only I can't know which things because the Oversoul is still keeping me from knowing them."

  "Right."

  "Then why doesn't the Oversoul stop people from thinking about murder^ Why doesn't the Oversoul stop people from thinking about war, and rape, and stealing? If it can do this to me^ why doesn't it do something useful?"

  Issib shook his head. "It doesn't seem right. But I've been thinking about it-I've had a year, remember-and here's the best thing IVe come up with. The Oversoul doesn't want to stop us from being human. Including all the rotten things we do to each other. It's just
trying to hold down the scale of our rottenness. All the things that are forbidden-how can I tell you this without setting you off?-if we still had the machines that the forbidden words refer to, it would make it so that anything we did would reach farther, and each weapon would cause more damage, and everything would happen faster:"

  "Time would speed up?"

  "No," said Issib. He was obviously choosing his words carefully. "What if... what if the Gorayni could bring an army of five thousand men from Yabrev to Basilica in one day."

  "Don't make me laugh."

  "But if they could ?"

  "We'd be helpless, of course."

  "Why?"

  "Well, we'd have no time to get an army together."

  "So if we knew other nations could do that, we'd have to keep an army all the time, wouldn't we, just in case somebody suddenly attacked."

  "I guess."

  "So then, knowing that, suppose the Gorayni found a way to get, not five thousand, but fifty thousand soldiers here, and not in a day, but in six hours."

  "Impossible."

  "What if I tell you that it's been done?"

  "Whoever could do that would rule the whole world."

  "Exactly, Nyef, unless everybody else could do it, too. But what kind of world would that be? It would be as if the world had turned small, and everybody was right next door to everybody else. A cruel, bullying, domineering nation like the Gorayni could put their armies on anybody's doorstep. So all other nations of the world would have to band together to stop them. And instead of a few thousand people dying, a million, ten million people might die in a war."

  "So that's why the Oversoul keeps us from thinking about... quick ways... to get lots of soldiers from one place to another."

  "That was hard to say, wasn't it?"

  "I kept ... my mind kept wandering."

  "It's a hard concept to keep in your mind, and you aren't even thinking about anything specific."

  "I hate this," said Nafai. "You can't even tell me how anybody could do a trick like that. I can hardly even hold the concept in my mind as it is. I hate this."