Earthfall

by Orson Scott Card

  "The angel didn't make this print," said Oykib.

  Elemak looked up at him with steely hatred in his eyes.

  Nafai at once interrupted. "Elemak is the one who knows how to read the tracks of animals, Oykib."

  "But I saw the angel-"

  "So did Elemak," said Nafai, "and it's his daughter." He turned to Elemak. "Tell us what to do, Elemak."

  Chveya turned to Oykib and, for a moment, silently buried her face in his shoulder. It was the way she responded when Nafai said exactly the wrong thing- which was surprisingly often, for a man as bright as he was. Nafai was correct as far as he knew; it was quite proper for everyone to defer to Elemak's judgment in this matter. But he should have known by now that Elemak would not be grateful to prevail because Nafai told everyone to let him have his way.

  Besides, Elemak should not prevail, because he was wrong. Oykib knew that angels hadn't taken the child. The kidnappers were no flyers. They had to be searched for on the ground. Worse, those who did take Zhivya had among them at least a few who hungered to eat the living flesh of an infant. There was real urgency in the search, and it would be a criminal waste of time to go off trying to track flying creatures who didn't have the baby.

  As if she could hear his thoughts, Mother put a hand on Oykib's shoulder. "Be patient, my son," she said, "You know what you know, and you'll be heard in due time."

  Due time? Oykib looked down at Chveya. Her lips were pursed; she was as worried as he was, and as frustrated.

  Elemak was organizing his search party, assigning men where to go.

  Volemak spoke up. "Are all the adults gathered here? Who's watching the children, when we already know that they aren't safe in their homes?"

  At once the women with children began rushing out of the house, back to their homes.

  "Elemak," said Volemak. "Leave me a few men here, to protect the village while you're gone."

  Elemak agreed at once. "You keep Nafai and Oykib here-he can tell you his theories to his heart's content. Give me the other men, though."

  "I'm a man," said Yasai.

  Oykib restrained himself from saying, "Yes, if a dandelion is a tree." This wasn't the time for teasing. And Yasai was a man.

  "If there's an attack," said Volemak, "we'll need more. Perhaps the younger men."

  Now Elemak dug in his heels. "Nafai has the cloak. If you need more, you have the older boys. We're trying to track creatures who fly. I can't do it without as many men as possible."

  "I can protect the village," said Protchnu, trying to look older than his nine years.

  Elemak looked at him with a serious expression. "You'll have to. Obey your grandfather without question."

  Protchnu nodded. Oykib could not help but think that if Elemak had ever followed his own advice, everyone's lives would have been a lot happier over the past few months.

  Moments later Elemak was off, leaving behind, of the men, only Nafai, Issib, Volemak, and Oykib.

  "Welcome to the ranks of the useless," said Issib wryly.

  "Useless? I hardly think so," said Volemak. "All right, now, Oykib. Tell us what you know."

  "I saw an angel tonight," said Oykib. "The same one Elemak saw. But he was only a couple of meters from me, and I saw his foot. It couldn't possibly have made this print."

  "Who, then?" asked Nafai.

  "There are others," said Chveya. "I've caught glimpses of them. Never anything I could see clearly, but enough that I've begun to make connections. Hushidh has got some hints of this, too. They're all around us. But they're low, in the underbrush. Like Eiadh said, low shadows. Sometimes in the trees."

  "You know this, and you haven't seen them?" asked Issib.

  "I see the connections among them. Faintly." Chveya smiled grimly. "It's the best we've got."

  "Not enough," said Nafai. He fixed Oykib with a cold stare. "Stop playing games, Oykib. What do you know?"

  For the first time it occurred to Oykib that maybe he hadn't kept his secret as well as he thought. "What I know is that there was no malice in the angel. In his mind we're the Old Ones, and he's filled with respect and awe. But there are other minds, and they've been watching us for months, and some of them...." He glanced at Eiadh, realized that he had to be careful how he said it. "Some of them might be dangerous to Zhivya."

  "The ones that we've been calling diggers," said Nafai.

  Volemak nodded. "And they live nearby."

  Issib laughed, "What, we get shovels and start digging?" He waved his arm to show the vast area they'd have to dig up.

  "Burrows have entrances," said Nafai.

  "We've been exploring all around here," said Protchnu. "We've never seen any holes."

  "Why don't we do the obvious thing?" said Oykib. "The thing that Elemak would have done, if he hadn't been so sure that the kidnappers could fly. Follow the footprints."

  The diggers' prints were lost almost at once in the mess that their own feet had made when they ran in response to Eiadh's scream. It didn't help that Rasa was leading the women in gathering the little children out of their beds and into the schoolhouse. Despite the tumult, though, Volemak managed to get lanterns distributed to the men and the older boys, and in a few minutes Protchnu gave a cry. "Here!" he shouted. "They weren't dodging or anything, they just ran in a straight line."

  It was true-the trail picked up just where it might have been expected from the direction the diggers first ran upon leaving Elemak's and Eiadh's door. The others ran to join Protchnu, but stayed behind as he led the way toward the edge of the woods.

  "Wait," said Volemak. "Nafai, Oykib-you spread out to the sides and keep watch. I don't want Protchnu walking head down into a trap."

  Carrying lanterns in one hand, gardening tools as makeshift weapons in the other, the ragtag little army entered the verge of the forest. Four adult men, a bunch of little boys, and the young women who had no children yet-that would strike terror in their enemies. As soon as they entered the woods, the tracking became harder-leaves on the forest floor didn't hold footprints very clearly. It took Protchnu a while to get even six meters into the woods, and then he lost the trail.

  Moving slowly and carefully, they all scouted an ever-widening circle, trying to pick up the trail again. Then Oykib heard a low cry from Protchnu, standing only a few paces off. The boy was looking up into the branches. "I'm so stupid!" he said, and immediately ran back to where he had lost the trail.

  Oykib followed him. "You think they carried the baby through the trees?"

  "Up into one tree," said Protchnu. "Remember the hollow stumps we found when we were felling trees?"

  "Shedemei said it wasn't impossible for some disease to have... ."

  By then, though, Protchnu had clambered up the tree and was pressing against the trunk here and there, pressing hard. "Protchnu, you aren't looking for secret passages, are you?"

  "We burned the hollow trees because we couldn't use them for construction," said Protchnu. "We should have studied them. The prints lead right to this tree and disappear. They went somewhere."

  Protchnu suddenly stopped and grinned. "It gave a little here. Hold your torch up, Uncle Oykib. I found me a door." Using the blade of the hoe he was carrying, Protchnu pried into a fissure in the bark and sure enough, an oblong patch of trunk opened up like a door. It had been a seamless part of the trunk until that moment.

  "Protchnu, remind me never to call you stupid," said Oykib.

  Protchnu barely heard him. He had already turned around and had his legs into the opening.

  Oykib set down his lantern and fairly leapt up the trunk to grab Protchnu's arm. "No!" he cried. "We don't need to be trying to rescue two of Elemak's children!"

  "I'm the only one who can fit through the door!" Protchnu yelled, struggling to get free of Oykib's grip.

  "Proya, you've been brilliant, so don't turn stupid on me!" Oykib shouted back. "You can't go feetfirst into their den! You don't know whether there'll even be room down there to use the hoe. Come on, get your legs
out before they cut off your feet!"

  Reluctantly, Protchnu backed out of the door.

  By now, the others had gathered. Nafai was carrying an axe, as was Oykib. When Protchnu was out of the tree, they began to work quickly, chopping into the trunk. In only a few minutes, they had torn away so much of the surviving trunk that the tree toppled.

  Now the opening wasn't just a tiny doorway. It was large enough that any of the adults could drop down into the hole. And, lowering his lantern as far down into the opening as he could, Nafai announced that the chamber was tall enough for a human to stand, and the tunnels large enough for hurnans to use them-on all fours.

  "I don't think that's a good idea at the moment," said Volemak.

  "We don't have time to waste, Father," said Nafai.

  "Stand up and look around you, Nyef."

  They raised their lanterns and looked. In the trees, on the ground, hundreds of diggers surrounded them, brandishing clubs and stone-tipped spears.

  "I think they've got the numbers on us," said Issib.

  "They're ugly," said Sevet's son Umene. "Their skin's all pink and hairless."

  "Ugly is the least of our problems," said Volemak,

  "Any idea who their leader is?" asked Nafai.

  "Didn't Chveya come with us?" asked Oykib.

  She was already scanning the diggers. She frowned, then pointed. "He's there, behind those others."

  At once Nafai stripped his shirt off over his head, baring the skin of his chest and back. As he did, his skin began to glow, to shine. The cloak of the starmaster, normally invisible as it lived under his skin, was now radiating light in order to make a god of Nafai-at least in these diggers' eyes. At once Oykib heard a cacophony of prayers and curses. "It's working," Oykib said quietly. "The sphincter muscles are loosening. There's going to be a circle of extrafertile ground when this night is over."

  A couple of the boys laughed. None of the adults did.

  Nafai walked over and stood before the place that Chveya had pointed out. "Which one of these little monsters do I want?" he asked.

  Chveya came up beside him, careful not to touch his glowing skin. Now she could pick out the leader, a large, strong one, wearing a necklace of small bones around his neck. "The one with the trophy necklace."

  Nafai raised his hand and pointed. His finger glowed. Suddenly a spark leapt from his hand to the leader of the diggers. The trophy necklace wasn't much help to him-he immediately sprawled flat on the ground, trembling.

  "You didn't kill him, did you?" asked Chveya.

  Oykib could barely hear her. The tumult of terrified prayers from the diggers drowned out almost all other perceptions in his mind. Yet even their terror was tainted with rage and with lust for vengeance. They feared Nafai, but they hated him and wanted him destroyed. "If you think you're making friends," Oykib murmured.

  "Oykib," said Nafai, ignoring both their comments, "I need you to do the speaking. I'm busy being a god. I can't let them see me struggling to communicate. Besides, you're the only one with a hope of understanding their responses."

  Oykib was astonished. "How can I talk to them? I don't know their language."

  "You caught some of the angel language, didn't you? The Oversoul said you did."

  "But I've never understood or even heard their-"

  "You're about to hear it now," said Nafai.

  So the Oversoul is aware of me and knows what I can do, thought Oykib. It was the first confirmation of this that he had ever had. But did the Oversoul know how much he couldn't do?

  He stepped forward, walking toward the leader, who was being helped back to his feet. "The baby," said Oykib. He pantomimed rocking a baby in his arms. The diggers had been watching the humans long enough to understand what the gesture represented.

  The digger king babbled something. Oykib was surprised by the language. It was the opposite of the angel language-all sibilants, fricatives, nasals, with a sound, not of music, but of spitting and humming. Does it only sound like an evil and slimy language to me because of what I know about their prayers and hungers?

  When the digger king was speaking to his followers, Oykib understood nothing, of course. In a few moments the diggers dragged forward four of their soldiers and threw them down at Nafai's feet. Now Oykib could get a clear sense of the terror, the cursing and prayers of the four. "These are the ones who did the kidnapping," said Oykib. "I think they're giving them to you for punishment."

  Immediately Nafai turned his back on the offering. "Tell them it's the baby I want, not vengeance."

  "Oh, I'm supposed to do that with sign language?" said Oykib. But he tried, all the same, using the same symbol for the baby, and then gesturing for the four to be taken away.

  But the diggers apparently thought the gesture meant something else. At a command from the king, four other diggers bounded out and put the blades of their spears against the throats of the four kidnappers. "No!" Oykib shouted, hearing Chveya's voice along with his. Nafai turned around and with a single sweep of his dazzling arm he knocked all eight diggers to the ground. Then he seemed to go berserk, pointing at trees, one at a time, until a spot in their branches burst into flame,

  "It's too wet to start a real fire going," Oykib murmured.

  "I'm counting on that," said Nafai. "You think I want to burn down our village?"

  As far as the diggers were concerned, though, this was the rage of the gods and their forest was doomed. The king rushed out and threw himself down on his belly at Nafai's feet. Then, almost at once, he flipped himself onto his back and flung his arms and legs outward, so his naked belly was completely exposed.

  Oykib's mind was filled with prayers, and now, because the digger king was close, because Oykib now knew something of the context, he was able to understand more of what the king was saying. "He's pleading with the god-with you-to kill him and spare his people."

  "So he wa worthy king," murmured Nafai. "Tell him we want the baby and nothing else. But first I'm going to respect his offering." Nafai took a single stride, so he straddled the supine body of the king. Then he reached down and touched the king's chest with the blade of the axe. "What do you think?" asked Nafai. "They're a violent people, right? Help me on this, I'm making up a ritual as I go along,"

  "No blood," said Oykib. "That wouldn't be right. It's the other king who does the blood rituals."

  "Other king?" asked Nafai.

  Chveya was startled, but then confirmed it. "There's as much loyalty to another as to this one." Then she frowned. "But there's someone else, too. Someone that the king himself feels allegiance to. Someone underground."

  "No blood," said Nafai. "So what should I do?"

  "Give him the axe," said Oykib. "That's the thing that he hardly dares to hope for, but wants above all else. He'll give you his spear and his bone necklace."

  Nafai let the handle of the axe slip out of his hands.

  "No!" shouted Protchnu behind them. "Don't give up your weapon! You never give up your weapon!"

  "Shut up, Proya," said Volemak mildly.

  The digger king wrapped one hand around the shaft of the axe, then rolled to his belly and rose to his feet. He could lift the axe easily enough, but the handle wasn't right for his hand and he couldn't raise the head of the axe while holding the end of the handle. There was no reason to worry that he could use it as a weapon.

  The king bent down and picked up his spear, then offered it to Nafai.

  "What does it mean if I take this?" asked Nafai.

  "I don't know," said Oykib. "It's not like this stuff comes to me with a glossary and footnotes."

  Nafai took the spear. The king now lifted the bone necklace over his head and held it out to Nafai. "I don't like the bones of this thing," said Nafai, hesitant to take it.

  "I don't either," said Oykib. "I think it's time to demand Zhivya again."

  "And why do you think that?"

  "Because I don't like the way he's praying for you to take the necklace. He really, really wants
you to take it, but I don't think it's because he loves you."

  "All right," said Nafai. "Tell him I want the baby."

  Oykib stepped between Nafoi and the king, effectively blocking the transfer of the necklace. The king rocked back on his haunches, looking-what? Was that anger? It looked like anger to Oykib. He made the sign for the baby, then shouted-no, screamed-right in the king's face. "Bring us Zhivya or we'll kill every last one of you ugly naked pink-skinned bastards!"

  "Since they don't understand you anyway," said Chveya, "couldn't you use language that we won't have to explain to the little boys later?"

  "He's trying to communicate rage," said Nafai. "Is it working?"

  "Oh, it's working," said Chveya. "You and he are definitely gaining control over the situation. They don't like you, though."

  "I'm heartbroken," said Nafai,

  "Break the spear," said Oykib.

  "What?" said Nafai.

  "That's what he's afraid of, as he stands there holding the axe. He's afraid you'll break the spear."

  Nafai broke the handle of the spear across his knees. The crack of the breaking wood rang through the air.

  At once the digger king took the axe in both hands and tried to break the handle. He couldn't. It was too thick, too well-tempered.

  "Do something else he can't do," said Oykib. "He has to fail twice."

  Nafai reached down and took the end of the spear that had the head on it. Using the tip of the spear as a knife, he cut quickly and deeply across his own belly. Blood immediately sprayed out onto the digger king's face, and for a moment Oykib saw, to his horror, that Nafai had cut all the way through the muscle and exposed his bowels. In moments, though, the cloak of the starmaster began healing the wound, and as the diggers watched, the wound closed without a scar.

  The digger king took the head of the axe in his hands, as if he contemplated his own disembowelment.

  "I don't want him to kill himself," said Nafai. "I don't have the power to heal him."