The Memory of Earth (26 page)

And yet they’re losing. It’s slipping away. The Oversoul would help them if it could, but it hasn’t the power or influence that it once had; and anyway, it hasn’t the freedom to act to make people goodhearted, only to keep their malice within fairly narrow boundaries. Spite and malice, that was the lifeblood of Basilica today; Gaballufix is only the man who happens to best express the poisonous heart of the city. Even those who hate him and fight against him are generally doing it, not because they are good and he is evil, but because they resent the fact that he is achieving dominance, when they had hoped for dominance for themselves.

I
would
help, said the silent voice of the Oversoul in Nafai’s mind. I
would
help the good people of Basilica. But there aren’t enough of them. The will of the city is for destruction. How then can I keep it from being
destroyed? If Gaballufix fails in his plans, the city will raise up some other man to help it kill itself. The fire will come because the city craves it. They are far too few, those who love the living city instead of desiring to feed from its corpse.

Tears flowed from Nafai’s eyes. I didn’t understand. I never saw the city this way.

That’s because you are your mother’s son, your father’s heir. Like all human beings, you assume that behind the masks of their faces, other people are fundamentally like yourself. But it isn’t always so. Some of them can’t see other people’s happiness without wanting to destroy it, can’t see the bonds of love between friends or mates without wanting to break them. And many others, who aren’t malicious in themselves, become their tools in the hope of some short-term gain. The people have lost their vision. And I haven’t the power to restore it. All that’s left, Nafai, is my memory of Earth.

“Tell me about Earth,” whispered Nafai.

Again a window opened in his mind, only now it was not memories of his own. Instead he was seeing things he had never seen before. It overwhelmed him; he could hardly make sense of the things he saw. Bright glass-and-metal caskets speeding along gray-ribbon highways. Massive metal houses that rose up in the air, skidding along the face of the sky on slender, fragile wedges of painted steel. Tall polyhedral buildings with mirrored faces, reflecting each other, reflecting the yellow sunlight. And there amid them, shacks made of paper and cast-off metal, where families watched their babies die with bloated bellies. People tossing balls of fire at each other, or great gouts of flame flowing out of hoses. And completely inexplicable things: one of the flying houses passing over a city, dropping something that seemed as insignificant as a turd, only suddenly it burst into a ball of
flame as bright as the sun, and the entire city under it was flattened, and the rubble burned. A family sitting at a huge table, covered in food, eating ravenously, then leaning over and vomiting on ragged beggars that clung hopelessly to the legs of their chairs. Surely this vision was not literal, but figurative! Surely no one ever would be so morally bankrupt as to eat more than he needed, while others were dying of hunger before their eyes! Surely anyone who could think of a way to make the sky burst into flame so hot it could destroy a whole city at once, surely such a person would kill himself before he’d ever let anyone know the terrible secret of that weapon.

“Is this Earth?” he whispered to the Oversoul. “So beautiful and monstrous? Is this what we were?”

Yes, came the answer. It’s what you were, and it’s what you will be again, if I can’t find a way to re-awaken the world to my voice. In Basilica there are many who eat their fill of food, and then eat more, while they know how many there are who haven’t enough. There’s a famine only three hundred kilometers to the north.

“We could use wagons to carry food there,” said Nafai.

The Gorayni have such wagons. They carry food, too—but the food is for the soldiers that came to conquer the famine-ravaged land. Only when they had subdued the people and destroyed their government did they bring food. It was the slops a swinekeeper brings to his herd. You feed them now in order to hear them sizzle later.

The visions continued—for hours, it seemed at the time, though later Nafai would realize that it could only have been a few minutes. More and more memories of Earth, with ever more disturbing behavior, ever stranger machines. Until the great fire, and the spaceships rising up from the smoke and ice and ash that remained behind.

“They fled because they had destroyed their world.”

No, said the Oversoul. They fled because they longed to begin again. At least those who came to Harmony came, not because Earth was no longer fit for them, but because they believed they were no longer fit for Earth. Billions had died, but there was still fuel and life enough on Earth for perhaps a few hundred thousand humans to survive. But they couldn’t bear to live on the world they had ruined. We’ll go away, they said to each other, while the world heals itself During our exile, we will also learn healing, and when we return we’ll be fit to inherit the land of our birth, and care for it.

So they created the Oversoul, and brought it with them to Harmony, and gave it hundreds of satellites to be its eyes, its voice; they altered their own genes to give themselves the capacity to receive the voice of the Oversoul inside their own minds; and they filled the Oversoul with memories of Earth and left it to watch over their children for the next twenty million years.

Surely in that time, they told each other, our children will have learned how to live together in harmony. They will make the name of this planet come true in their lives. And at the end of that time, the Oversoul will know how to bring them home, to where the Keeper of Earth is waiting for them.

“But we aren’t ready,” said Nafai. “After twice that time, we’re as bad as ever, except that you’ve kept us from developing the power to turn all the life of this planet into ashes and ice.”

The Oversoul put the thought into Nafai’s mind: By now the Keeper has surely done its part. The Earth is ready for our return. But the people of Harmony aren’t ready yet to come. I have kept all the knowledge of Earth for all these years, waiting to tell you how to build the houses that fly, the starships that will bring you home to the world of your birth; but I dare not teach you, because
you’d use the knowledge to oppress and finally to obliterate each other.

“Then what are you doing?” asked Nafai. “What is your plan? Why have you brought us out here?”

I can’t tell you vet, said the Oversoul. I’m not sure of you yet. But I’ve told you what you wanted. I’ve told you my purpose. I’ve told you what I’ve already accomplished, and what is yet to be accomplished. I haven’t changed—I’m the same today as I was when your forebears first set me in place to watch over you. My plans are all designed to prepare humanity to return to the Keeper of Earth, who waits for you. It’s all I live for, to make humankind fit to return. I am the memory of Earth, all that remains of it, and if you help me, Nafai, you will be part of accomplishing that plan, if it can be accomplished at all.

If it can be accomplished at all.

The overwhelming sense of the presence of the Oversoul in his mind was gone, suddenly; it was as if a great fire inside him had suddenly gone out, as if a great rushing river of life inside him had gone abruptly dry. Nafai sat there on the rock beside the river, feeling spent, exhausted, empty, with that last despairing thought still lingering in his heart: If it can be accomplished at all.

His mouth was dry. He knelt by the water, plunged in his hands, and drew the cupped water to his mouth to drink. It wasn’t enough. He splashed into the water, his whole body, not with the reverent attitude of prayer, but with a desperate thirst; he buried his head under the water and drank deep, with his cheek against the cold stone of the riverbed, the water tumbling over his back, his calves. He drank and drank, lifted his head and shoulders above the water to gasp in the evening air, and then collapsed into the water again, to drink as greedily as before.

It was a kind of prayer, though, he realized as he emerged, freezing cold as the water evaporated from his skin in the breeze of the dark morning.

I am with you, he said to the Oversoul. I’ll do whatever you ask, because I long for you to accomplish your purpose here. I will do all that I can to prepare us all to return to Earth.

He was chilled to the bone by the time he got back to the tent, not dripping wet anymore, but not dry, either. He lay trembling on his mat for a long time, warmed by the air in the tent, by the heat of Issib’s body, until at last he was able to sleep.

There was a lot of work to do in the morning; tired though he was, Nafai had no chance to sleep late, but rather staggered through his jobs, slow and clumsy enough that Elemak and even Father barked at him angrily. Pay attention! Use your head! Not till the heat of the afternoon, when they took the nap that desert dwellers knew was as much a part of survival as water, did Nafai have a chance to recover from his night-walking, from his vision. Only then he couldn’t bear to sleep. He lay on his mat and told Issib everything that he had seen, and what he had learned from the Oversoul. When he was finished, Issib had tears streaking his face, and he slowly and with great exertion reached out a hand to clasp Nafai’s. “I knew there had to be some purpose behind it,” whispered Issib. “This makes so much sense to me. It fits everything. How lucky you were, to hear the voice of the Oversoul. Even more clearly than Father did, I think. As clearly as Luet, I think. You are like Luet.”

That made Nafai a little uncomfortable, for a moment at least. He had resented or ridiculed Luet in his own mind, and sometimes in his words. The contemptuous word
witch
had come so easily to his lips. Was this what
she felt, when the Oversoul sent her a vision? How could I have ridiculed her for that?

He slept again, and woke, and they finished their work: a permanent corral for the camels, made of piled stones bonded with a gravitic field powered by solar collectors; refrigeration sheds for storing the dried food that would keep them for a year, if it took that long before they could return to Basilica; wards and watches placed around the perimeter of the valley, so that no one could come near enough to see them without them noticing him in return. They built no fires, of course—in the desert, wood was too precious to burn. They took it farther, though; they would cook nothing, because an inexplicable heat source might be detectable. The warmth of their bodies was all the infrared radiation they dared to give off, and the electromagnetic noise put out by their wards and watches, the gravitic field, the refrigeration, the solar collectors, and Issib’s chair was not strong enough to be picked up much beyond their perimeter, except with instruments far more sensitive than anything passing marauders or caravans were likely to have. They were as safe as they could make themselves.

At dinner, Nafai commented on how unnecessary it all was. “We’re on the errand of the Oversoul,” he said. “The Oversoul has kept people away from here all these years, keeping it ready for us—it would have kept on keeping people away.”

Elemak laughed, and Mebbekew hooted hysterically. “Well, Nafai the theologian,” said Meb, “if the Oversoul’s so capable of keeping us safe, why did it send us out here into the landscape of hell instead of letting us
safely
stay home?”

“How are you such an expert on the Oversoul, anyway, Nafai?” asked Elemak. “That mother of yours obviously had you spending too much time with witches.”

For once, Nafai stifled his angry retorts. There was no point in arguing with them, he realized. But then, he had realized that many times before, and hadn’t been able to hold his tongue. The difference now, Nafai realized, was that he was no longer just Nafai, the youngest of Wetchik’s boys. Now he was the friend and ally of the Oversoul. He had more important concerns than arguing with Elya and Meb.

“Nafai,” said Father, “your reasoning is faulty. Why should we make the Oversoul waste time watching over us, when we’re perfectly capable of watching over ourselves?”

“Of course not, Father,” said Nafai. His remark had been foolish. It would be wrong for them to burden the Oversoul, when the Oversoul needed them to help bear its burden. “I’m sorry.”

Elemak smiled slightly, and Mebbekew rolled his eyes and laughed again. “Listen to them,” he said. “Rational men, supposedly, talking about whether the Oversoul should tend our camels or not.”

“It was the Oversoul that brought us here,” said Father, rather coldly.

“It was
you
who made us go,” said Mebbekew, “and Elemak who guided us.”

“It was the Oversoul who warned me to leave,” said Father, “and the Oversoul that brought us to this well-watered valley.”

“Oh, yes, of course, I forgot,” said Meb. “I thought that was a vulture circling, but instead it was the Oversoul, leading the way.”

“Only a fool jokes about what he doesn’t understand,” said Father.

“Only an old
joke
goes around calling rational men
fools
,” said Mebbekew. “
You’re
the one who sees plots and conspiracies in shadows, Father.”

“Shut up,” said Elemak.

“Don’t tell me to shut up.”

“Shut up,” said Elemak again. He turned slowly to meet Mebbekew’s hot glare. Nafai could see that, though Elya’s eyes were heavy lidded, as if he were barely awake, his eyes were afire as he stared Meb down.

“Fine,” said Mebbekew, turning back to his dinner, smearing cold bean paste onto another cracker. “I guess I’m the only one who doesn’t think camping trips are just the funnest thing.”

“This isn’t a camping trip,” said Father. “It’s exile.”

“What I can’t figure out,” said Mebbekew, “is what
I
did to deserve exile.”

“You’re my son,” said Father. “None of us were safe there.”

“Come on,” said Meb. “We were all safe.”

“Drop it,” said Elemak. Again he met Mebbekew’s glare.

Now Nafai began to recognize the trend here. Elemak didn’t like Mebbekew talking about whether there was really a plot against Father, or whether there had been any reason for the whole family to flee into the desert. It was a sensitive subject, and Nafai guessed that both of them knew more than they were willing to talk about. If they had some dark secret, it would be no surprise if Elemak chose to conceal it by never letting a conversation even come near it, while Mebbekew would be far more likely to try to hide it behind a smokescreen of casual denials and mocking lies.