Earthborn

by Orson Scott Card

  Ah, such cheers! And how the people murmured about Aronha's wisdom and tolerance. He will be a wise king, a great king. How many of them understand, Shedemei wondered, that by "old ways" he means the re-enslavement or expulsion of the diggers? No true Kept could possibly join with them in that program-but by inviting them anyway, Aronha was able to create the illusion that their assembly could include everyone.

  And how many realize, thought Shedemei, that the peace within Darakemba was only three generations old, for until the time of Mo-tiak's grandfather the nation of the Nafari had existed high in the farthest reaches of the gornaya and only joined with the people of Darakemba less than a century ago? And even at that there has always been discontent among the old aristocracy of Darakemba, who felt displaced and devalued by the imposition of the Nafari ruling elite over them. No, there'll be no discussion of that. Akma may talk about wanting to be strictly honest about history, but he'll bend the truth however he needs to build his support.

  Mon's speech was much more specific, talking about the rituals that they would attempt to preserve. "We ask th? old priests to come forward over the next few weeks to take their places in these rituals. Some of the rituals, of course, require the presence of the king; those will not be performed until and unless our beloved Motiak chooses to lead us in them." Not said, but understood perfectly by everyone there, was the fact that if Motiak never chose to lead those rituals, Aronha would perform them when he became Aronak at some future time. "We will keep the old holidays with feasting rather than fasting," said Mon, "with joy rather than melancholy."

  That's right, thought Shedemei. Make sure that people understand they won't be required to sacrifice anything in order to belong to your assembly. A religion that is all sweetness, but no light; all form, but no substance; all tradition, but no precept.

  Ominer spent his time talking about membership in the assembly. "Add your names to the rolls-no need to do it today, you can do it anytime in the next few weeks. Enrollment will take place in the houses of the priests. We ask you to donate what you can to help us pay for land where we can assemble and to help support the schools that we will establish to help raise up our children in the old ways, as we were raised in the king's house. One thing you can be sure of- once you are admitted to the rolls of the Assembly of the Ancient Ways, you will never be turned out just because you have a difference of opinion with some priest."

  Another jab at the Assembly of the Kept. As for donations, Shedemei almost laughed aloud at the cynicism of it. The Kept were mostly poor, and all of them donated labor and money at great sacrifice to pay for buildings and for the teachers in their schools. But they did it because of the fervency of their belief and the depth of their commitment. The Assembly of the Ancient Ways, however, would never get that level of contribution from its common members. Yet they would not lack for funds, because all the wealthy people of business and property would know that contributions to the Ancient Ways would be noticed and remembered by the future king and his brothers. Oh, there would be no budgetary shortages, and the priests who used to be salaried before Motiak's reforms would find themselves with tidy incomes once again. None of this nonsense of priests working among the common people! This would be a high-class priesthood.

  Khimin, being young, fumbled a little with his speech, but the audience seemed to find his mistakes endearing. He had been relegated merely to affirming his agreement with all that his brothers had said and then announcing that as soon as the Assembly was well organized in Darakemba, Akma and the sons of Motiak would be traveling to every major city in every province to speak to the people there and organize the Ancient Ways wherever they were invited to do so. Unfortunately, they had no money of their own, and it wouldn't be right to use their fathers' wealth to sustain a religion that they didn't approve of, so Khimin and his brothers and their friend Akma would be dependent upon the hospitality of others in those faraway places.

  Shedemei wondered whether they would live long enough to stay a night in every house that would be pathetically eager to take them in. Rich families that would never give a flatcake to a beggar would plead for the chance to show generosity to these boys who had never known a day of want in their lives.

 

  And learned nothing from it, Shedemei said silently.

 

  Among them, the four sons of Motiak had taken only half an hour. It was plain when Akma rose to speak that the people had no idea of what to expect from him. The sons of the king were celebrities; but Akma was the son of Akmaro, and the rumors about him had been mostly negative. Some disliked him because they resented his father's religious reforms. Some disliked him because he had repudiated his father's life's work-which the sons of Motiak had not done, even reaffirming their absolute loyalty to their father's kingship. Others disliked him because he was a scholar and reputed to be one of the most brilliant minds that frequented the library in the king's house-there was a natural suspicion of those with too much book-learning. And others didn't want to like him because they had heard he didn't believe in the Keeper of Earth, which was an absurd position for someone to take when he was about to start a new religion.

  Akma surprised them. He surprised Shedemei, for that matter, and she had known from the Oversoul exactly what he planned to say. What Shedemei wasn't prepared for was the vigor in his way of speaking, the excitement in his voice. Yet he used no extravagant gestures, merely looked out into the audience with such piercing intensity that everyone felt, at one time or another, that Akma was looking right at them, talking straight to them, that he knew their heart.

  Even Shedemei felt his gaze on her when he said, "Some of you have heard that I don't believe in the Keeper of Earth. I'm glad to tell you that this is not true. I don't believe in the Keeper the way some have talked about him-that primitive idea of an entity who sends dreams to certain people but not to others, playing favorites with the men and women of the world. I don't believe in a being who makes plans for us and gets angry when we don't carry them out, who rejects some people because they don't obey him quickly enough or don't love their enemies better than they love their friends. I don't believe in some all-knowing being who made humans and angels into lovers of light and air, and then demanded that they live nose-to-tail with tunnel-dwelling creatures of grime and muck-surely this Keeper of Earth could do a better job of planning than that!"

  They laughed. They loved it. A little abuse of the diggers-that proved his religion was going to be Just Fine.

  "No, the Keeper of Earth that I believe in is the great force of life that dwells in all things. When the rain falls, that is the Keeper of Earth. When the wind blows, when the sun shines, when maize and potatoes grow, when water flows clear over the rocks, when fish leap into the net, when babies cry out their first joyful song of life-that is the Keeper of Earth that I believe in! The natural order of things, the laws of nature-you don't have to think about them to obey them! You don't have to have special dreamers who will tell you what the Keeper wants you to do. The Keeper wants you to eat-you know that because you're hungry! The Keeper wants you to laugh-you know that because you enjoy laughing! The Keeper wants you to have babies-you know that because you not only love these little ones, you even love the way you go about getting them! The messages of the Keeper of Earth come to everyone, and except for the sweet and ancient stories and rituals that bind us together as a people, there is nothing for us to teach you that you don't learn just as well by simply being alive!"

  Shedemei tried desperately to think of retorts for all the things he said, the way she had done with the sons of Motiak, but she found the spell of his voice so compelling that she couldn't answer. He owned her mind as long as he chose to speak to her. She knew that she didn't
believe him; she just couldn't remember, for the moment, why.

  He went on and on, but his speech didn't seem long. Every word was fascinating, moving, funny, joyful, wise-you dared not miss any of it. Never mind that Shedemei knew that he was lying, that even he did not believe half of what he said. It was still beautiful; it was still music; the rhapsody of his words swept the people with it like a current in the icy water of Tsidorek, numbing them even as it moved them.

  She only won her freedom from the magic of his speech when, near the end, he proposed his ultimate solution to the problem of the diggers. "We have all been sickened by the acts of wanton cruelty over the past months," said Akma. "Every such action was against the laws that already existed, and we are glad that our wise king has made the laws even stronger by forbidding any persecution of people because of their religious beliefs. Nevertheless, there would have been no persecution if there had been no diggers living unnaturally among the men and women of Darakemba."

  There it was-the moment when Shedemei recoiled from his words and stopped finding his voice beautiful. But the others around her were not so clear minded, and she had to nudge the other teachers from her school and glare at them to make sure they knew that they should not believe what he was saying now.

  "Is it the diggers' fault that they are here? It was .certainly never their intention! Some of them have lived in this area since the ancient days when diggers and angels always lived near each other-so that diggers could steal the children of angels and eat them in their dank warrens. One can hardly list that as a qualification for citizenship! Most diggers that live in Darakemba, however, are here because they or their parents took part in a raiding party on the borders of our land, trying to steal from hardworking men and women the fruits of their labors. Either they were captured in bloody battle or were taken when a retaliatory raid captured a digger village; then they were brought here as slaves. That was a mistake! That was wrong! Not because the diggers are not suited to slavery-by nature they are slaves, and that is how the rulers of the Elemaki treat them all. No, our mistake was that even as slaves, even as trophies of victory, it was wrong to bring diggers into a nation of people, where some would be deceived. Yes, some would think that because the diggers were capable of a kind of speech, they were therefore capable of thinking like, feeling like, acting like people. But we must not be deceived. Our eyes can tell us that these are lies. What human hasn't rejoiced to see an angel in flight or hear the eveningsong of our brothers and sisters! What angel has not delighted in the learning that the humans brought with them, the powerful tools that can be shaped and wielded by strong human arms! We can live together, help each other-though I am not saying that our brothers in Khideo may not continue to deprive themselves of the good company of the sky people if they so choose."

  Another appreciative laugh from the audience.

  "But do you rejoice to see the buttocks of a digger flash in the air as he burrows into the earth? Do you love to hear their whining, grating voices, to see their claws touching food that you are expected to eat? Isn't it a mockery when you see their spadelike fingers clutching a book? Don't you long to leave the room if one of them should ever attempt to sing?"

  Each line of abuse was greeted with a laugh.

  "They didn't choose to live among us! And now, stricken with the poverty that must always be the lot of those unequal to the mental requirements of real citizenship, they haven't the means to leave! And why should they? Life in Darakemba, even for a digger, is vastly better than life among the Elemaki! Yet we must have respect for the Keeper of Earth and obey the natural repugnance that is the Keeper's clear message to us. The diggers must leave! But not by force! Not by violence! We are civilized! We are not Elemaki. I have felt the lash of the Elemaki diggers on my back, and I would rather give my life than see any human or angel treat even the vilest digger in that way! Civilized people are above such cruelty."

  The people cheered and applauded. Aren't we all noble, thought Shedemei, to repudiate the persecution even as Akma is about to tell us a new way to begin it again, only more effectively.

  "Are we helpless, then? What about those diggers who understand the truth and want to leave Darakemba, yet can't afford the cost of the journey? Let us help them understand that they must go. Let us help them kindly on their way. First, you must realize that the only reason diggers stay here is because we keep paying them to do work that poor and struggling humans and angels would gladly do. Of course you can pay the diggers less, since they only need to dig a hole in the bank of a creek in order to have a house! But you must make the sacrifice-for their sake as well as our own!-and stop hiring them for any work at all. Pay a little more to have a man dig that ditch. Pay a little more to have a woman wash your clothes. It will be worth the cost because you won't have to pay to have bad work redone!"

  Applause. Laughter. Shedemei wanted to weep at the injustice of his lie.

  "Don't buy from digger tradesmen. Don't even buy from human or angel shopkeepers, if the goods were made using digger labor. Insist that they guarantee that all the work was done by men and women, not by lower creatures. But if a digger wants to sell his land, then yes, buy it-at a fair price, too. Let them all sell their land, till not one patch of earth in Darakemba has a digger's name attached to it."

  Applause. Cheers.

  "Will they go hungry? Yes. Will their poverty grow worse? Yes. But we will not let them starve. I spent years of my childhood with constant hunger because our digger slavedrivers wouldn't give us enough to eat! We are not like them! We will gather food, we will use funds donated to the Assembly of the Ancient Ways, and we will feed every digger in Darakemba if we have to-but only long enough for them to make the journey to the border! And we will feed them only as long as they are on their way! They can have food from the larders of the Ancient Ways-but only at the edge of the city, and then they must walk, they and all their families, along the road toward the border. At stations along the way, we'll have a safe place for them to camp, and food for them to eat, and they will be treated with kindness and courtesy-but in the morning they will rise and eat and be on their way, ever closer to the border. And at the end, they will be given enough to walk on for another week, to find a place within the lands of the Elemaki, where they belong. Let them do their labor there! Let them preserve the precious ‘culture' that certain people prize so much-but not in Darakemba! Not in Darakemba!"

  As he no doubt planned, the audience took up the chant; it was only with difficulty that he quieted them again so he could finish. The speech did not go on much longer after that-only long enough for him to rhapsodize again about the beauty of the ancient ways of the Nafari and the Darakembi, about how loving and inclusive tke Assembly of the Ancient Ways would be, and how only among the Ancient, as they would call themselves, could true justice and kindness be found, for diggers as well as angels and humans. They screamed their approval, chanted his name, cried out their love for him.

 

  He doesn't have mine, Shedemei answered silently.

 

  And how will it sound to the earth people?

 

  Motiak will stop it, won't he?

 

  Doesn't he see that to take away their livelihood and drive them from their homes so they can survive at all is every bit as cruel, in the long run?

 

 
The Keeper doesn't work like that. He wants people to follow him because they love his way.

 

  And they were back to plotting murder as quickly as they could.

  "Let's go home, Shedemei," said one of the students.

  "He was so wonderful," said one of the others, shaking her head ruefully. "Too bad that everything he said was pure shit."

  Shedemei immediately reproved her coarse wording, but then laughed and hugged her. The students of her school might have been caught up in the moment, but they had been truly educated and not just schooled-they were able to hear something they had never before, analyze it, and decide for themselves that it was worthless, dangerous, vile... .