Earthborn

by Orson Scott Card

  "And now that you have planned how to save the kingdom from Akmaro's excessively inclusive beliefs, may I go inside and find a perch where I can dangle myself to stretch out my aching muscles?"

  "We can carry you in, if you want," offered Mon mischievously. "Save me even more trouble by cutting off my head and carrying it inside. The rest of my body isn't much use to me these days anyway."

  They laughed and got up from the grass. They walked more slowly returning to the king's house, but there was a dance, a spring in the way the boys walked-no, bounced-along the path through the king's park. And when they passed Khimin, who was trying to memorize a long poem and having a miserable time of it, they shocked him utterly by actually inviting him to walk along with them. "Why!" Khimin demanded suspiciously.

  "Because even though your mother is a certified idiot," said Mon, "you're still my brother and I've treated you shamefully for too many years. Give me a chance to make it up to you."

  As Khimin slowly and guardedly made his way toward them, Akma whispered to Mon, "You're committed now, you know."

  "Who knows?" asked Mon. "He may be decent company after all. Edhadeya always says he's all right, if we only give him a chance."

  "Then Edhadeya will be very happy," said Akma. Mon winked at him. "If you like, I'll tell her that including Dudagu Dermo's spawn was your idea."

  Akma rolled his eyes. "I'm not casting covetous eyes on your sister, Mon. She's three years older than me."

  "My gift may not come from the Keeper," said Mon, "but I still know a lie when I hear one."

  With that, Khimin was near enough to overhear them, and the conversation changed to include him. By the time they reached the king's house, Akma and Mon had both used so much charm on the poor eighteen-year-old that he was utterly besotted with them and would have believed them if they told him his own feet were tree stumps and his nose a turnip.

  Bego left them as soon as they were inside, and on his way through the corridors he did use his wings a bit, skittering along the floor and singing snatches of happy songs to himself. Clever boys, he said to himself. They'll do it, if we give them half a chance. They will do it.

  Luet loved it when Mother went to call on Dudagu in the king's house, because after a few moments of being polite to the queen, who was not aging well and spent her days complaining of ill health, she was always excused and allowed to go off in search of Edhadeya. She had begun the custom when she was only five, and Edhadeya was a lofty ten-year-old; she marveled now, thinking back, that the king's daughter had been so kind to a child half her age who had so recently been a slave to diggers. Or perhaps that was the reason-Edhadeya had taken pity on her, having heard the story of her suffering. Well, however it began, the friendship was in full bloom now, with Edhadeya twenty-three years old and Luet eighteen and a woman.

  She found her friend working with the musicians, teaching them some new composition. The drummers seemed not to be able to get the rhythm right. "It isn't hard," Edhadeya was saying. "It's only hard when you put it together. But if you can hear how it goes with the melody... ." Whereupon Edhadeya began to sing, a high sweet voice, and now the one drummer, now the other, began to feel how the beat she had been teaching fit with the tune she sang, and without even thinking what she was doing, Luet began to spin and raise her arms and hop in the steps of an impromptu dance.

  "You shame my poor tune!" cried Edhadeya.

  "Don't stop, it was beautiful!"

  But Edhadeya stopped at once, leaving the musicians to work on the song while she walked with Luet out into the vegetable garden. "Worms everywhere. In the old days we used to have slaves whose whole job was picking them off the leaves. Now we can't pay anyone enough to do it, so all our greens have holes in them and every now and then a salad moves of its own accord. We all pretend it's a miracle and go on eating."

  "I have to tell you that Akma is in one of his vile moods lately," said Luet.

  "I don't care," said Edhadeya. "He's too young for me. He's always been too young for me. It was a form of madness that I ever thought I was in love with him."

  Luet looked up at the sky. "What? All those clouds? I thought you loved my brother whenever it rained."

  "At the moment it's not raining," said Edhadeya. "And is today one of the days you're in love with Mon?"

  "Nobody," said Luet. "I don't think I'd make a good wife."

  "Why not?" asked Edhadeya.

  "I don't want to stay in a house and order work all day. I want to go out like Father does and teach and talk and-"

  "He works."

  "In the fields, I know! But I'd do that! Just don't make me stay indoors. Maybe it was my childhood labor in the fields. Maybe in my heart I'm always afraid that if I'm not working, some digger twice my height will-"

  "Oh, Luet, I get nightmares whenever you talk like that."

  "Found one," said Luet, holding up a worm.

  "How attractive," said Edhadeya.

  Luet crushed the worm between her fingers, balled up the remnants of its body, and dropped it into the soil. "One more salad that will not move," she said.

  "Luet," said Edhadeya, and in the moment the whole tone of the conversation changed. No longer were they playful girls. Now they were women, and the business was serious. "What has your brother come up with lately? What's going on between him and my brothers?"

  "He's always over here with Mon," said Luet. "I think they're studying something with Bego. Or something."

  "So he doesn't talk to you?" said Edhadeya. "He talks to them."

  "Them?"

  "Not just Mon now. He talks to Aronha and Ominer and Khimin."

  "Well, it's nice that he's including Khimin. I don't really think the boy is as awful as-"

  "Oh, he's awful, all right. But potentially salvageable, and if I thought it was salvage that Akma and Mon had in mind, I'd be glad," said Edhadeya. "But it's not."

  "Not?"

  "Yesterday someone mentioned true dreams and looked at me. It was nothing, just a chance comment. I can't even remember-one of the councilors, coming to meet with Father, and he looked at me. But I happened to turn away just at that moment and saw Ominer rolling his eyes in ridicule. So I followed him and once we were alone in the courtyard I threw him up against the wall and demanded to know why he was making fun of me."

  "You're always so gentle," murmured Luet.

  "Ominer doesn't hear you unless he's in physical pain," said Edhadeya. "And I'm still stronger than he is." ffi

  "Well, what did he say?"

  "He denied he was making fun of me. So I said, Whom were you making fun of? And he said, Him."

  "Who?" asked Luet.

  "You know, the councilor who looked at me. And I said, you can't blame people for thinking about my dream of the Zenifi when they see me. Not everybody has true dreams. And then he said-listen, Luet-he said, Nobody does."

  "Nobody?" Luet laughed, then realized that Edhadeya didn't think it was funny. "Dedaya, I've had true dreams, you've had true dreams. Mother's a raveler. Mon has his truthsense. Father dreams true, and- this is absurd."

  "I know that. So I asked him why he said it, and he wouldn't tell. I pinched him, I tickled him-Luet, Ominer can't keep a secret from me. I've always been able to torture it out of him in five minutes. But this time he pretended he didn't know what I was talking about."

  "And you think it has something to do with Akma and Mon?"

  "I know it does. Luet, the only way Ominer could possibly keep a secret from me is if he was more frightened of someone else. And the only two people he fears more than me in the whole world are-"

  "Your father?"

  "Don't be silly, Father's as sweet as they come when he notices Ominer at all-which isn't often, he blends in with the walls. No, it's Mon and Aronha. I think it's both of them. I watched this morning, and all four of my brothers ended up with your brother and whatever they're talking about or planning or doing-"

  "It has to do with the idea that there are no true dreams." Edh
adeya nodded. "I can't go to Father with this, they'd just deny it."

  "Lie to your father?"

  "Something's different. It made me feel dark and unpleasant and I think they're plotting something."

  "Don't say that," said Luet. "It's our families we're talking about."

  "They're not just boys anymore. Because we're still studying, we sometimes forget that we're not really in school, none of us but Khimin, when you come down to it. We're men and women. If Akma weren't your father's son, he'd be earning his own living. Aronha plays at soldier, but he has too much leisure, and so do my other brothers- they make priests work, but not the sons of the king."

  Luet nodded. "Father tried to make Akma start earning his way when he was only fifteen. The age when laborers' children-"

  "I know the age," said Edhadeya.

  "Akma just said, ‘What, are you going to stand over me with a whip if I don't?' It was really vicious."

  "Your father wasn't his taskmaster in those terrible days," said Edhadeya.

  "But Father forgave the taskmasters. The Pabulogi. Akma hasn't, and he is still angry."

  "Thirteen years!" cried Edhadeya.

  "Akma feeds on it the way an unborn chick feeds on the yolk of its egg. Even when he's thinking about something else, even when he doesn't realize it, he's seething inside. He was my teacher for a while. We became very close. I loved him for a while more than I loved anybody. But if I came too close, if I touched his affection in just the wrong way, he lashed out. Sometimes it shocked me the way Elemak and Mebbekew must have felt when Nafai knocked them down with lightning from his finger."

  "Melancholy. I thought he was just a moody sort of person," said Edhadeya.

  "Oh, I'm sure that's it," said Luet, "it's just that when he gets into that mood, it's my father that he rages at."

  "And the Pabulogi."

  "They don't come around often. When the priests come in for their meetings with Father, Akma makes sure he's somewhere else. I don't think he's seen any of them for years."

  "But you've seen them."

  Luet smiled wanly. "As little as possible."

  "Even from her deathbed, as she calls it, Mother gets all the gossip, and she says that Didul looks at you like... like. ..."

  "Like my worst nightmare."

  "You can't mean that," said Edhadeya.

  "Not him personally. But what if he did decide he loved me? What if I loved him? It would be quicker and kinder if I just slit Akma's throat in his sleep."

  "You mean this childish melancholy of Akma's would keep you from the man you love?"

  "I don't love Didul. It was just a hypothetical situation."

  "Lutya, my friend, isn't life complicated here in the king's house?"

  "It's probably just as complicated for the poorest peasants. Down in their holes in the ground the most powerless ex-slaves probably have exactly the same problems. Grudges, loves, anger, fear, hate-"

  "But when they quarrel in their tunnels, the whole kingdom doesn't quake," said Edhadeya.

  "Well, that's your family. Not mine."

  Edhadeya picked another worm off another leaf. "There are people eating holes in the kingdom, Lutya. What if our brothers turn out to be among the worms?"

  "That's what you're afraid of, isn't it? Deny the Keeper. Then we don't have to associate with diggers and angels and-"

  "Mon loves the angels. It would kill him not to be with them."

  "But does he love the sky people more than Akma hates the earth people?"

  "When it comes down to it, Mon won't give up his love for the angels."

  "Still. It would be a terrible thing if they started-"

  "Don't even think about it," said Edhadeya. "Our brothers would not commit treason."

  "Then you're not afraid," said Luet.

  Edhadeya sat on a bench and sighed. "I am afraid."

  A new voice came from behind them. "Of what?"

  They turned. It was Chebeya, Luet's mother. "Done already?" Luet asked.

  "Poor Dudagu is exhausted," said Chebeya.

  Edhadeya snorted.

  "Don't make that sound in the woods," said Chebeya, "or a jaguar will find you."

  "I don't see why you think it's so unnatural for me to despise my stepmother," said Edhadeya.

  "Your father loves her," said Chebeya.

  "A sign of his infinite capacity for love," said Edhadeya.

  "What were you talking about when I came out here?" asked Chebeya. "And don't deny it was important, I could see how you were bound together."

  Luet and Edhadeya looked at each other.

  "Trying to decide how much to tell me?" asked Chebeya. "Let me make it easy for you. Start with everything."

  So they told her.

  "Let me watch them a little," said Chebeya, when they were done. "If I see them together, I can learn a lot."

  "How can Mon not believe in true dreams?" asked Edhadeya. "He knows when things are true-he knew my dream about your family was a true one."

  "Don't underestimate my son's powers of persuasion," said Chebeya.

  "Mon isn't any man's puppet," said Edhadeya. "I know him."

  "No, not a puppet," said Chebeya. "But I know Akma's gift."

  "He has one?" asked Luet.

  "The little sister is the last to see," said Edhadeya.

  "He has the same gift as me," said Chebeya.

  "He's never said so!" cried Luet.

  "No, because he doesn't realize it. It's different with men, I think. Men don't form communities as easily as women do. Human men, I'm speaking of-angels aren't like this. Or maybe they are, it's not as if I've had much experience. I just know that when a man has the raveling gift, he doesn't see the connections between people the same way. What he does is he starts unconsciously finding ways to gather up all those scattered threads in his own hands."

  "So he can't see the web of people," said Luet. "He just becomes the spider?"

  Chebeya shuddered. "I haven't explained to him what it is he does. I'm afraid that if he ever becomes conscious of it, it'll be much worse. He'll become more powerful and... ."

  "Dangerous," said Edhadeya.

  Chebeya turned away from her. "He gathers people up and they want to please him."

  "Enough that Mon would give up his love for the sky people?" asked Edhadeya.

  "I'll have to see them together, with that in mind. But if Akma really cared about something and needed Mon's help, then I think Mon would help him."

  "But that's horrible," said Edhadeya. "Does that mean that the times I thought I loved him-"

  "I don't know," said Chebeya. "Or I mean-I do know-as much as he is capable of love, he has loved you, from time to time."

  "Not now."

  "Not lately."

  Tears rolled out of Edhadeya's eyes. "This is so stupid," said Edhadeya. "I'm not even pining for him, I go whole days without thinking of him-but it's just this gift of his, isn't it?"

  Chebeya shook her head. "When he ravels people up, it only lasts for a little while. A day or two. Unless he stays with you, it fades. You haven't seen him in a week."

  "I see him every day," said Edhadeya.

  "You haven't been close to him, though," said Luet helpfully.

  "He has to be talking to you, looking at you, interacting with you," said Chebeya. "You can trust your feelings with him. They're real enough."

  "More's the pity," murmured Edhadeya.

  "Mother," said Luet, "I think something very dangerous is happening. I think Akma and the sons of Motiak are plotting something."

  "As I said, I'll look and see if it seems that way."

  "And if it does?"

  "I'll talk to your father about it," said Chebeya. "And perhaps then we'll talk to the king. And he may want to talk to you."

  "And when everyone has talked to everybody," said Edhadeya, "there still won't be a thing we can do."

  Chebeya smiled. "Ever hopeful, aren't you? Dedaya, have some trust. Your father and my husband and I may be old,
but we still have some power within our reach. We can change things."

  "I notice you didn't include my stepmother in that group," said Edhadeya nastily.

  Chebeya smiled with benign innocence. "Poor Dudagu. She's too frail to be mentioned in the same breath with power."

  Edhadeya laughed.

  "Come home with me now, Luet. There's work to do."

  Edhadeya hugged them both and watched them leave the courtyard. Then she lay back on the bench and looked up at the sky. She thought, when the angle of the sun was right, that she could see the star Basilica even in bright sunlight. Today, though, the clouds were blocking everything. It was going to rain.

  "One-Who-Was-Never-Buried," murmured Edhadeya. "Are you going to do anything about this?"

  Shedemei loaded her supplies into the ship's launch as the Oversoul murmured one more time inside her mind:

  "Do you think you can't protect me?" asked Shedemei.

 

  "That's all I ask."

 

  "I want to know these people, that's all," said Shedemei. "I want to know them for myself."

 

  "Do I have to say it? Can't you look inside my mind and see the truth?"

 

  "I can. I'm going down there because I'm lonely. There, is that what you wanted to hear?"

 

  "Well, now you've heard it. I want to hear another organic voice. No insult to you, but I actually would like to feel like some other people know me."

 

  "I know," said Shedemei. "And I don't claim to have any great and noble purpose. I'm just ready to come out of this metal shell and bump up against some people again." Then she thought of something. "How old am I? People will ask."