Earthborn (Homecoming) (47 page)

Almost at once the answer came: You have not seen the Keeper of Earth. But you have seen my home, my library, and some of my tools. I can’t show you more than this because your mind has no way to receive what I really am. Is this enough?

Yes, said Shedemei silently.

At once the dream changed. She saw all at once more than forty worlds that had been colonized from Earth, and all of them were being watched by some kind of Oversoul, and all the Oversouls were being watched by the Keeper. In particular she saw Harmony, the millions of people as if for just this moment her mind had the capacity to know them all at once. She felt herself in contact with the other iteration of the Oversoul that still lived there; but no, that was illusion, there was no such connection. Yet she knew that it was time for the Oversoul of Harmony to allow the humans there to recover their lost technologies. That’s how the Oversoul would be rebuilt—by humans who had regained their hands.

It’s time, said the clear voice of the Keeper in the dream. Let them build new starships and come home.

What about the people here? asked Shedemei. Have you given up on them?

The time of clarity has come. The decision will be made, one way or the other. So I can send for the people of Harmony now, because by the time they get here, either the three species will be living in perfect peace, or their pride will have broken them and made them ripe for domination by those who come after.

Like the Rasulum, thought Shedemei.

They also had their moment of choice, the Keeper replied.

The dream changed again, and now she saw Akma and the sons of Motiak walking along a road. She knew at once exactly where the road was, and what time of day it would be when they reached that point.

In the dream she saw the launch drop out of the sky, deliberately raising a cloud of smoke under it when it landed; she saw herself stride out, the cloak of the starmaster dazzlingly bright so that they couldn’t bear to look at her. She began to speak, and at that moment the earth shook under them, driven by the currents of magma, and the young men fell to the ground. Then the quaking of the earth ended, and she spoke again, and at last she understood what it was the Keeper needed her to do.

Will you? asked the Keeper.

Will it help? she asked. Will it save these people?

Yes, the Keeper answered. No matter what he chooses, Motiak will finish his days as king of a peaceful kingdom, because of your intervention here. But what happens in the far future—that is what Akma will decide. You may live to see it if you want.

How, if the
Basilica
must go back to Harmony?

I’m in no hurry here. Have the ship’s computer send a probe. You can stay, and the Oversoul can stay. Don’t you want to see some part of how it ends?

Yes, I do.

I know you do, said the Keeper. Until you made this visit to Earth, I wasn’t sure if you were truly part of me, because I didn’t know if you loved the people enough to share my work. You’re not the same person you were when I first called you here.

I know, said Shedemei in the dream. I used to live for nothing but my work.

Oh, you still do
that,
and so do I. It’s just that your work has changed, and now it’s the same as my work: to teach the people of Earth how to live, on and on, generation to generation; and how to make that life joyful and free. You made your choice, and so now, like Akmaro, I can give you what you want, because I know that you desire only the joy of these people, forever.

I’m not so pure-hearted as that!

Don’t be confused by your transient feelings. I know what you do; I know why you do it; I can name you more truly than you can name yourself.

For a moment, Shedemei could see herself reaching up and plucking a white fruit from a tree; she tasted it, and the flavor of it filled her body with light and she could fly, she could sing all songs at once and they were endlessly beautiful inside her. She knew what the fruit was—it was the love of the Keeper for the people of Earth. The white fruit was a taste of the Keeper’s joy. Yet also in the flavor of it was something else, the tang, the sharp pain of the millions, the billions of people who could not understand what the Keeper wanted for them, or who, understanding, hated it and rejected her interference in their lives. Let us be ourselves, they demanded. Let us accomplish our accomplishments. We want none of your gifts, we don’t want to be part of your plan. And so they were swept away in the currents of time, belonging to no part of history because they could not be part of something larger than themselves. Yet they had their free choice; they were not punished except by the natural consequence of their own pride. Thus even in rejecting the Keeper’s plan they became a part of it; in refusing to taste the fruit of the tree, they became part of its exquisite flavor. There was honor even in that. Their hubris mattered, even though in the long flow of burning history it changed nothing. It mattered because the Keeper loved them and remembered them
and knew their names and their stories and mourned for them: O my daughter, O my son, you are also part of me, the Keeper cried out to them. You are part of my endless yearning, and I will never forget you—

And the emotions became too much for Shedemei. She had dwelt in the Keeper’s mind for as long as she could bear. She awoke sobbing violently, overwhelmed, overcome. Awoke and uttered a long mournful cry of unspeakable grief—grief for the lost ones, grief for having had to leave the mind of the Keeper, grief because the taste of the white fruit was gone from her lips and it had only been a dream after all. A true dream, but a dream that ends, it ended, and here I am more alone than I ever was before because for the first time in my life I had the experience of being
not
alone and I never knew, I never knew how beautiful it was to be truly, wholly known and loved. Her cry trailed off; her body was spent by the dream; she slept again, and dreamed no more until morning. By then enough time had passed that she could bear to be awake, though the dream was still powerfully present in her mind.

“Did you watch?” she whispered.

“He had different work to do,” she said. “Can you get me to the place where I’m supposed to be?”

She ate as the launch moved, chewing mechanically; the food had no flavor, compared to what she remembered from her dream.

“Your waiting is over at last,” she said between bites. “I assume you saw that.”

“So did I. But I got enough, I think, to last me for a while.”

can
speak so clearly, why do you think she’s usually so vague?>

“I understood why, during the dream,” said Shedemei. “The experience is so overwhelming that if she gave it to most people, they’d be so consumed by it that they wouldn’t own their souls anymore. Their will would be swallowed up in hers. It would kill them, in effect.”

“I’m not. But since I had already chosen to follow the Keeper’s plan, this dream didn’t erase my will, it confirmed who I already was and what I already wanted. I didn’t lose my freedom, and instead of killing me it made me more alive.”

“Yes, that’s right. It’s an organic thing.” She thought for a moment longer, and added, “She said she couldn’t let me see her face, but now I understand that I don’t need to or want to, because I’ve done something better.”

“I’ve worn her face. I’ve seen through her eyes.”

your
face a thousand times before now, and used your hands and speech to do her work.>

Shedemei held up her hands and looked at them, damp and crumbed from the meal she was just finishing. “Then I would have to say that the Keeper of Earth looks just like me, don’t you think?” She laughed for a moment; the sound was no doubt as raucous as any laugh, but inside herself it awakened the memory of music, and for a moment she remembered the taste of the fruit, and she was content.

When Edhadeya came to see them after their big public meeting in Jatva, it was Mon who went aside with her to hear what she had to say. “If you’ve come to persuade me to break ranks with my brothers,” he began, but she gave him no chance to finish.

“I know you’re already committed to denying everything that was ever noble and good about you, Mon, so I wouldn’t waste my time. Father sent me with a message.”

Mon felt the tiniest thrill of fear and dread. He often found it hard to believe that Father was letting them get away with all the things they were doing. Oh, he had stopped them from organizing the boycott of digger trade and labor, but of course they got around that by pretending to speak
against
the boycott—everyone understood the real message. Was Father now taking action against them? And if so, why was there something inside Mon that welcomed it? Was it that victory had come to them too easily, and he wanted some kind of contest?

“Are you listening?” asked Edhadeya.

“Yes,” said Mon.

“Father is worried that some of his soldiers might decide that their duty to the king requires them to remove the source of his recent unhappiness. Some chance remarks of his, overheard by others out of context, have given some soldiers the impression that he would welcome this.”

“Sounds to me as though he gave an order and changed his mind a little too late.” Mon laughed nastily.

“You know that isn’t true.”

He did, of course. His truthsense rebelled against the idea—but he was getting better and better at suppressing it.

“What does he think we’re going to do?” asked Mon. “Go into hiding? Stop speaking publicly? He can forget it. Killing us would only make martyrs of us and make our victory complete. Besides, he didn’t raise cowards.”

“Fools, yes, liars, yes, but not cowards.” Edhadeya smiled grimly. “He knows you won’t back down. All he suggested was that you keep your travel plans secret. Don’t tell people where you’re going next. Don’t tell them when you’re going to leave.”

Mon thought about it for a moment. “All right. I’ll tell the others.”

“Then I’ve done my duty.” She turned to leave.

“Wait,” said Mon. “Is that all? No other messages? Nothing personal from you?”

“Nothing but my loathing, which I freely give to all five of you, but with a special extra dose for you, Mon, since I know that
you
know that Akma is wrong with every word he says. Akma may be doing most of the talking, but you are the most dishonest one, because you know the truth.”

Mon started to explain again about how his childish truthsense was pure illusion designed to win attention for the second son of the king, but before he was well launched into it, she slapped his face.

“Not to me,” she said. “You can tell that to anyone else and they can believe it if they want, but never say it to me. The insult is unbearable.”

This time when she walked away, melting into the dispersing crowd, he didn’t call her back. The stinging of his cheek had brought tears to his eyes, but he wasn’t sure if it was just the pain that had done it. He thought back to those wonderful days when he was young and Edhadeya was his dearest friend. He remembered how she trusted him to take her true dream to Father, and because of Aronha’s absolute trust in his truthsense, he had won a hearing and an expedition was launched and the Zenifi were rescued. He had believed in those days that this would be his place in the kingdom, to be Aronha’s most trusted counselor because Aronha would know that Mon could not lie. And the time when Bego used him to help translate the Rasulum leaves. . . .

Funny, now that he thought of it with the sting of Edhadeya’s slap still in his face, how Bego didn’t believe in the Keeper, but he still used Mon to help him with the translation. Wasn’t it Bego, really, who taught them all to disbelieve in the Keeper? But Bego believed. Or at least believed in Mon’s gift.

No, no, Akma already explained that. Bego didn’t think of it as a gift from the Keeper, he thought of it as an innate talent in Mon himself. That’s right, the ability to sense when people really believed what they were saying. It had nothing to do with absolute truth, and everything to do with absolute belief.

But if that’s the case, thought Mon, why don’t I ever get a sense that a single thing that Akma says is true? I haven’t really got the logic of that straight. If my truthsense came from the Keeper, then the Keeper might be trying to turn me against Akma by refusing to confirm anything he says. But then, that would mean there really
was
a Keeper, so that can’t be the reason. At the same time, if Akma is right and my truthsense is merely my own ability to tell when people are certain that they’re telling the truth, what does
that say about my complete lack of confirmation concerning Akma’s words? It means that no matter how convincing he sounds—and don’t I get caught up in his speeches the way the crowd does, swept along and utterly persuaded?—my truthsense still says that he’s lying. He doesn’t believe a word he’s saying. Or if he believes it, it’s like an opinion, not like a certainty. At the core of him, in his heart, in the deepest places in his mind, he isn’t saying these things because he is sure of them.

So what
does
Akma believe? And why am I denying my truthsense in favor of Akma’s uncertainties?

No, no, I already went through this with Akma, and he explained that a truly educated man never believes
anything
with certainty because he knows that further learning might challenge any or all of his beliefs; therefore I will only get a strong response from my truthsense about people who are ignorant or fanatical.

Ignorant or fanatical . . . like Edhadeya? Bego?