Earthfall (Homecoming) (25 page)

Elemak shrugged off the hand she had laid upon his arm. “Don’t patronize me, Eiadh.”

“Don’t be angry, Elemak,” she said. “Zhivya was lost, and she’s been restored to us. It’s a day for rejoicing, not anger. You might even thank the ones who brought her back to us.”

“Thank them? Because the Oversoul gave Nafai the only good weapon? Because they followed me on a foolish chase up the canyon
because
they knew it was foolish?”

Padarok stepped closer to Elemak. “No, Elemak. We followed you because we were afraid that you would do to one of us what you finally ended up doing to that harmless angel. And our fear was not unfounded. If you’ll remember, you came very close to doing it to
me
.”

Only now did Eiadh notice the bruises on Padarok’s neck and jaws.

“If Father hadn’t stood against you,” said Padarok.

Elemak, his face red with rage—or was it shame?—answered contemptuously. “Do you think I stopped because of
his
pathetic threats?”

“I don’t know why you stopped,” said Padarok. “But we never know whether you
will
stop. And so we obey you when you’re angry and irrational, because we’re afraid of you. And if you think about it without letting rage cloud your reason, you’ll realize that we have cause to be afraid.”

“Let’s go home, Elya,” said Eiadh again.

But Elemak was determined to have this out. “You would have let Zhivya die, because you were so afraid of me that you didn’t dare to argue with me?”

Paradok shook his head. “We knew that Nafai would get her back, if it could be done at all.”

“Nafai?” said Elemak. Then he roared. “Nafai! Nafai! Nafai! You trusted
him
to do it! You put my daughter’s life in
his
hands! What does he know, that stupid, boastful boy, that snot-nosed little pretender, that—”

“He
did it
!” Eiadh screamed at him. “You stupid angry fool, he
did
save her, so they were
right
to trust him!” Her screaming frightened the baby, who started to cry. But Eiadh couldn’t stop now. “And they knew that if you stayed here, you’d just do some angry stupid thing and cause a disaster, so it was
better
to have you off up the canyon where you wouldn’t start a war between us and the diggers. Do you get it now, Elemak? Now that you’ve made us tell you more than we ever meant to, will you finally understand what you
are
to us? We know that if anything delicate needs to be done,
you’d
better not be there, because you’ll always, always, always do something like what you did to that angel!”

For a moment Eiadh felt the thrill of having finally blurted out the truth, of having struck down the prideful man who had complicated her life so much for all these years.

Then she saw something she had never seen before. Elemak didn’t rage. His shoulders slumped. He visibly wilted. He looked at no one, met no one’s gaze. He just turned his back and walked into the forest.

“I’m sorry, Elya,” she called after him. “I was angry, I didn’t mean it.”

But he knew she meant it. Everyone knew she meant it, and everyone knew that what she had said was true. Everyone had known it for years. Finally, today, Elemak knew it too.

He came back the next day. Quiet, subdued. A different man. A broken man. Eiadh tried to apologize to him when they were alone in the house, but he walked out the door and wouldn’t listen. They shared their bed, but he never reached out to her. He would answer the children when they asked him questions, and sometimes he would play with them and laugh and smile like the old days. But he didn’t come to any of the meetings of the adults, and when Eiadh tried to involve him in decisions about their own household, he always answered the same way. “Whatever you want,” he said. “I don’t care.”

And he didn’t care, or so it seemed. He did his work in the fields, but he no longer had any ideas about what others should do. He simply did what he was asked. He worked hard. He exhausted himself, in fact. But he still seemed invisible.

I killed him, thought Eiadh.

Or maybe, just maybe, I took the first step toward healing him.

She would cling to that hope, she decided. This puzzling, quiet, withdrawn personality was just a stage in his development into a mature, wise, self-restrained, good man.

A man like Nafai.

Shedemei asked Volemak for a meeting of all those involved in dealing with the two sentient species. “There are decisions to be made,” she said, and so when the evening meal was done, they gathered in the ship’s library: Volemak and Shedemei, of course, and along with them Nafai and Luet, Issib and Hushidh, and Oykib and Chveya. “I invited Elemak,” Volemak explained, “because he had so much experience back on Harmony, dealing with strange cultures and foreign leaders. He declined to come, but I’m still going to ask him to work with the diggers, at least. They’re the ones who are living practically on top of us—”

“Actually, we’re living on top of
them
,” said Nafai.

Volemak paused for a moment of patience, as if saying silently, When will the boy grow up enough not to make jokes during serious discussions? Luet leaned over to Nafai and jabbed his leg with her finger. He grinned stupidly at her.

Volemak went on. “And it’s imperative that we reach a workable living arrangement. I don’t know about you, but what
I
saw the night of the kidnapping was a seriously conflicted digger society—an abduction organized by the son of the blood king, contrasted with the worship from the wife of the war king. The very fact that the wife—what’s her name?”

“Emeezem,” said Oykib.

“The fact that Emeezem succeeded where, um….”

“Mufruzhuuzh.”

“Where Muffle-whatever had failed may have weakened him. Therefore we can count on there being a faction that wants to rid the Earth of human beings, and perhaps two—Mufya’s and the plotters who did the actual kidnapping. I think Elemak can be valuable in reaching some kind of understanding with the hostile ones.”

“If he’ll do it,” said Hushidh. “He isn’t very closely bonded right now with anyone. Not even Protchnu, since the boy couldn’t keep himself from bragging to his father about how
he
was the one who discovered the entrance to the digger city up in a tree. It wasn’t a welcome topic at home.”

“You saw this domestic scene?” asked Volemak.

“I heard about it from an eyewitness,” said Hushidh.

“So it’s gossip,” said Volemak.

“First-generation gossip,” said Hushidh. “Very accurate. The best quality.”

Volemak smiled, then repeated firmly. “Gossip.”

Nafai spoke up. “I think Elemak’s the natural choice to work with the diggers.”

“There won’t be just one,” said Volemak. “And do us all a favor, Nafai. Don’t let it be known that you favor the idea of Elemak having such an assignment.”

Nafai nodded, suddenly serious. But Luet was not impressed. She knew that he understood, intellectually, that it was a bad idea for him to keep trying to be nice to Elemak. Just yesterday Luet had tried to explain it to him again, and he had interrupted her and explained it right back. “Elemak doesn’t see my eagerness to give him authority as trust or kindness, he sees it as condescension and gloating, I know. But it’s not gloating and it’s not condescension, Luet. I really
do
admire his abilities and I trust him to do an excellent job of whatever he’s doing. I can’t help wanting to reach out to him.”

“From your end it looks like reaching out,” Luet explained, patiently—for the fiftieth time, she was sure. “From his end it’s more like rubbing in.”

Nafai knew that he should simply remain silent on any issue regarding Elemak, but he couldn’t stand it. “Then everybody will think I’m sulking or that I don’t want him to do anything. I really
do
want him to do things, and so I have to say so, don’t I? So
everybody
knows there’s no hard feelings.”

“Can’t you just trust me?” said Luet. “Can’t you just trust me and
shut up
?”

He had given her his solemn vow—again—that he would say nothing to or about Elemak’s role in the community. And here he was in this meeting, not a day since the last time she had pleaded with him and he had remade his promise to her, doing exactly what he had vowed not to do.

Volemak was taking the meeting back to its main subject. “Anyway, we won’t have just one person working with the diggers. We have to have as many different perspectives as possible—even as we work to raise crops and get food and seeds stored away for the dry season. All of this is just a preamble, though. This meeting is Shedemei’s. I assume this means she has a report on digger and angel biology, and that’s as good a starting place as any.”

“It’s not really a report,” said Shedemei. “It’s more like a list of questions. The initial scan showed that like all the other animals and plants we’ve examined since we arrived, the diggers and angels show only the normal sorts of evolutionary changes from their ancestors of forty million years ago. Diggers were a species of field rat common in southern Mexico, and angels were a common species of bat. The genetic variation is on the order of only five percent from the original in both cases. It will be ages before we can even begin to examine the fossil record, but here you can see how the digger body has changed to be able to support a heavier head and the hands have evolved for grasping big heavy tools—while not losing the raw power of digging, climbing, and, I must add, killing with no tools at all.”

She switched from the rat and digger skeletons on the computer display to the bat and angel skeletons. “The angels had a more complex job—to retain flight, support a heavier brain, and develop the manual strength to use tools. Their compromise is to keep the use of their feet as strong hands. Standing on one foot, these hip joints give them enough rotation to swing a hand axe. But their arms, which in bats have only vestigial hands, have evolved back into good manual instruments. They can’t bear much weight, and as we learned through an unfortunate incident, the arms break easily enough in a strong grasp. So the hands aren’t used for gross physical activities. Rather they’re used for very delicate, fine work.”

She sat and regarded them steadily.

Luet finally realized what she was indicating. “You mean that the statues down in the digger city were made by the angels?”

“The digger hand is simply incapable of doing the fine work you described,” said Shedemei. “I’ve tested the diggers when they were semi-conscious. They can’t do work that doesn’t require a lot of force. When you sculpt in soft clay, you have to be very restrained, press only so hard. The diggers are incapable of that. They would mash the clay to a pulp.”

“Perhaps,” said Issib, “you’ve only been examining soldiers and manual laborers.”

“Did you notice any dimorphism underground?” Shedemei asked Nafai and Oykib.

“None,” said Nafai.

“And they admitted that they didn’t make the sculptures themselves,” added Oykib.

“But those are their gods,” said Chveya. “Gods which they worship by offering the bones of dead baby angels to them. It seems a little incongruous.”

“Yes, it does,” said Shedemei. “But that strikes at the heart of the most important questions. The first one is, Why did two intelligent species develop virtually in each other’s laps like this, without one destroying the other? According to the records in the library, several sentient species evolved along with humans from the same stock—robusts and heidelbergs, they called them—but the erects essentially erased the robusts, and the moderns wiped out the heidelbergs.”

“Might have absorbed them,” Issib corrected.

“However it happened,” said Shedemei, “where the moderns went, there were no more robusts, heidelbergs, or erects. So why do both angels and diggers survive?”

“Because they don’t compete for resources?” asked Chveya.

“My good student,” said Shedemei with a smile. “But the diggers
do
eat the angels’ young. And worship the statues they make. So it’s not the same as, for instance, octopuses and eagles, which simply don’t compete in any way. The angels are prey to the diggers. And yet they survive.”

“Art lovers,” said Nafai.

It sounded like another wisecrack and Luet was ready to poke him, but Shedemei answered as if it were a serious suggestion. “I think you’re right, Nafai. I think there’s something biological here, and the sculptures are involved. Didn’t you say, Oykib, that you’ve learned that the statues are always associated with mating and breeding in their worship?”

Oykib blushed and looked furtively at his wife, then at Nafai.

“Don’t be shy about it, Okya,” said Volemak. “Nafai felt it was wise to tell the rest of us about what you can do. Not everybody—just the people in this room. No reason to make everybody else paranoid about their prayers.”

Issib grinned maliciously. “We, of course, are the ones who are so perfect of heart that we don’t mind being spied on.”

“What Issya is trying to say,” said Volemak, “is that we accept that some of us have the ability to learn things that others might wish kept secret. But you’ve shown such remarkable discretion throughout your childhood and on into adulthood that we aren’t afraid of you.”

“I am,” said Chveya. “That’s the only reason I let you get me pregnant.”

“Veya,” Luet remonstrated. Did the girl have to be so crude?

“Anyway, Oykib, is that right?” said Shedemei.

“Yes,” he said. “Some of the…worshipful thoughts…they’re downright pornographic. I mean, the way they think of the statues. We’ve seen how most of them were worn down until some of them were just lumps. They worship by rubbing the statues all over themselves.”

“That’s very helpful,” said Shedemei. “That’s not a behavior I’ve seen in rats or any other rodent. Have you ever seen anything about that in your studies?”

“
You’re
the biologist, Shedya,” said Hushidh. “If you haven’t seen it, you can count on it that
we
haven’t.”

“As long as we’re on the subject of who knows what,” said Luet, “I’d like to know why I’m here. I mean, Shedya’s husband isn’t here, and Aunt Rasa isn’t here, so we’re not doing this in couples or anything. Shuya and Veya are both needed for understanding the diggers and angels because they can see things that language can’t convey. Oykib’s method is different, but the result is the same. Nafai is the one with the cloak, who has his face on a sculpture down in the digger city. Issib can’t work in the fields and he’s good at language and nobody handles the Index better than he does, so he’ll be vital for research and conversation. Why am
I
here?”

“Feeling a little insecure, my love?” asked Nafai with mock solicitude.

“You’re here,” said Volemak, “because you’re you. Not everybody has to have a specialization for what I have in mind. And you communicate with the Oversoul better than anyone.”

“Not when you use the Index,” said Luet. “I shouldn’t be here.”

“Shut up, Lutya,” said Hushidh cheerfully. “Your self-doubt is wasting everyone’s time.”

“Be patient,” said Volemak. “I’m making my point, and you’ll understand.” He took Shedemei’s illustrations off the display and replaced them with a map of the immediate area. “Here
we
are,” he said, “and here are the diggers. And way up here are the angels. Take a wild guess which culture we’ll come to understand best.”

“Especially if they get into a kidnapping mood again,” said Issib.

“I think that this can lead to an unfortunate outcome,” said Volemak. “First, we’d no doubt become closer to the species we know the best, and that might be a serious mistake. Second, and perhaps more important, the angels would certainly assume that we were closer to the diggers, and therefore they would be suspicious of everything we did. Perhaps hostile. You see the problem?”

Issib nodded. “You want some of them to go up and live among the angels.”

“That sounds so final,” said Nafai. This time Luet did poke him.

“Not some of
them
, Issya,” said Volemak. “Some of
you
.”

Issib looked angry. “Not me,” he said. “Not the chair.”

Luet understood. He had hated those years in the wilderness when he had been physically helpless except when in his floating chair. To have Hushidh have to lift him and carry him and help him with his bodily needs—it was bad enough when his children were little, but now it would be an unbearable humiliation. Here in the vicinity of the ship his magnetic floats worked just as they had in the city of Basilica, giving him nearly normal physical freedom. He was not about to give that up.

“Hear me out,” said Volemak. “I’ve thought this through very carefully, and if you listen reasonably you’ll agree with my conclusions. First, I don’t think we should send very many to the angels, because we need most of our strength here, working the fields and establishing the colony. So I’m sending only two couples and their small children. I can’t send Shedemei, because she has to be here, using the instruments in the ship. But I need to send somebody who is as methodical as she is, and as familiar with the library. That points to you, Issib.”

“It points to anybody here and half the people not here,” said Issib.

“Chveya and Hushidh both have roughly the same ability,” said Volemak, “and that ability is indispensable. So one stays here, and one goes there.”

“Oykib is the most valuable one for learning languages,” said Issib. “Send him up there.”

“I need Oykib down here,” said Volemak. “I want him learning the digger language alongside Elemak.”

Luet understood, as she was sure everyone else did—it would not be healthy if Elemak were the only interpreter they had. Volemak didn’t want to say it outright, but Elemak could not be wholly trusted. And the way he’d been acting since the night of the kidnapping, he might not accept the assignment to work with the diggers anyway.

“Besides,” said Volemak, “the diggers know Oykib.”

“They know Nafai, too,” said Issib.

“Don’t fight me on this, Issya,” said Volemak. “Nafai they see as a god. Therefore it’s very important that they not see too much of him. Let them worship the clay head and leave the man himself a mystery.”

“In other words,” said Nafai, “nobody who knows me could worship me.”

“That’s pretty much it,” said Volemak.

“I worship you,” Luet said, too sweetly.

Nafai smiled sweetly back.