The Ships of Earth: Homecoming: Volume 3 (3 page)

“People have left the city and gone colonizing before.”

“Those who want to adapt
will
adapt, I know,” said Shedemei. “But how many want to? How many have the will to set aside their own desires, to sacrifice for the good of us all?
I
don’t even have that degree of commitment. I’m more furious with every kilometer we move farther away from my work.”

“Well, then, we’re fortunate,” said Rasa. “Nobody else here
had
any work worth mentioning. And those who did have lost everything so they couldn’t go back anyway.”

“Meb’s work is waiting for him there,” said Shedemei.

Rasa looked baffled for a moment. “I’m not aware that Meb
had
any work, unless you mean his sad little career as an actor.”

“I meant his lifelong project of coupling with every female in Basilica who wasn’t actually blood kin of his, or unspeakably ugly, or dead.”

“Oh,” said Rasa, smiling wanly. “
That
work.”

“And he’s not the only one,” said Shedemei.

“Oh, I know,” said Rasa. “You’re too kind to say it, but my own daughters are no doubt longing to take up where they left off on their own versions of that project.”

“I don’t mean to offend you,” said Shedemei.

“I’m not offended. I know my daughters far too well. They have too much of their father in them for me not to know what to expect from them. But tell me, Shedya, which of these men do you honestly expect them to find attractive?”

“After a few weeks or a few days,
all
the men will start looking good to them.”

Rasa laughed lightly. “I daresay you’re right, my dear. But all the men in our little party are married—and you can bet that their wives will be looking out to make sure no one intrudes in their territory.”

Shedemei shook her head. “Rasa, you’re making a false assumption. Just because
you
have chosen to stay married to the same man, renewing him year after year since—well, since you gave birth to Nafai—that doesn’t mean that any
of the
other
women here are going to feel that possessive and protective of their husbands.”

“You think not?” said Rasa. “My darling daughter Kokor almost killed her sister Sevet because she was sleeping with Kokor’s husband Obring.”

“So … Obring won’t try to sleep with Sevet again. That doesn’t stop him from trying for Luet, for instance.”

“Luet!” said Rasa. “She’s a wonderful girl, Shedya, but she’s not beautiful in the way that a man like Obring looks for, and she’s also
very
young, and she’s plainly in love with Nafai, and most important of all, she’s the waterseer of Basilica and Obring would be scared to death to approach her.”

Shedemei shook her head. Didn’t Rasa see that
all
these arguments would fade to unimportance with the passage of time? Didn’t she understand that people like Obring and Meb, Kokor and Sevet lived for the hunt, and cared very little who the quarry might be?

“And if you think Obring might try for Eiadh, I’d laugh out loud,” said Rasa. “Oh, yes, he might
wish
, but Eiadh is a girl who loves and admires only strength in a man, and that is one virtue that Obring will never have. No, I think Obring will be quite faithful to Kokor.”

“Rasa, my dear teacher and friend,” said Shedemei, “before this month is out Obring will even have tried to seduce
me
.”

Rasa looked at Shedemei with a startlement she could not conceal. “Oh, now,” she said. “You’re not his—”

“His type is whatever woman hasn’t told him
no
recently,” said Shedemei. “And I warn you—if there’s one thing our group is too small to endure, it’s sexual tension. If we were like baboons, and our females were only sexually attractive a few times between pregnancies, we could have the kind of improvised short-term matings that baboons have. We could endure the periodic conflicts between males because they would end very quickly and we’d have peace the rest of the year. But we’re human, unfortunately, and we bond differently. Our children need
stability and peace. And there are too few of us to take a few murders here and there in stride.”

“Murders,” said Rasa. “Shedemei, what’s got into you?”

“Nafai has already killed one man,” said Shedemei. “And he’s probably the
nicest
of this group, except perhaps Vas.”

“The Oversoul told him to.”

“Yes, so Nafai’s the one man in this group who obeys the Oversoul. The others are even more likely to obey
their
god.”

“Which is?”

“It dangles between their legs,” said Shedemei.

“You biologists have such a cynical view of human beings,” said Rasa. “You’d think we were the lowest of animals.”

“Oh, not the lowest. Our males don’t try to eat their young.”

“And our females don’t devour their mates,” said Rasa.

“Though some have tried.”

They both laughed. They had been talking fairly quietly, and their camels were well separated from the others, but their laughter bridged the distance, and others turned to look at them.

“Don’t mind us!” called Rasa. “We weren’t laughing at you!”

But Elemak
did
mind them. He had been riding near the front of the caravan. Now he turned his animal and came back along the line until he reached them. His face was coldly angry.

“Try to have a little self-control, Lady Rasa,” said Elemak.

“What,” said Rasa, “my laughter was too loud?”

“Your laughter—and then your little jest. All at top volume. A woman’s voice can be carried on this breeze for miles. This desert isn’t thickly populated, but if anybody
does
hear you, you can find yourself raped, robbed, and killed in a remarkably short time.”

Shedemei knew that Elemak was right, of course—he was the one who had led caravans through the desert. But
she hated the condescension in his tone, the sarcasm. No man had a right to speak to Lady Rasa that way.

Yet Rasa herself seemed oblivious to the insult implied by Elya’s attitude. “A group as large as ours?” asked Rasa innocently. “I thought robbers would stay away.”

“They
pray
for groups like ours,” said Elemak. “More women than men. Traveling slowly. Heavily burdened. Talking carelessly aloud. Two women drifting back and separating from the rest of the group.”

Only then did Shedemei realize how vulnerable she and Rasa had been. It frightened her. She wasn’t used to thinking this way—thinking about how to avoid getting attacked. In Basilica she had always been safe.
Women
had always been safe in Basilica.

“And you might take another look at the men of our caravan,” said Elemak. “Which of them do you expect can fight for you and save you from a band of even three or four robbers, let alone a dozen?”

“
You
can,” said Rasa.

Elemak regarded her steadily for a moment or two. “Here in the open, where they’d have to show themselves for some distance, I suppose I could. But I’d rather not have to. So keep up and shut up. Please.”

The
please
at the end did little to ameliorate the sternness of his tone, but that did not keep Shedemei from deciding wholeheartedly to obey him. She did not have Rasa’s confidence that Elemak could single-handedly protect them from even small numbers of marauders.

Elemak glanced briefly at Shedemei, but his expression carried no meaning that she could interpret. Then he wheeled his camel and it lurched on ahead toward the front of the little caravan.

“It’ll be interesting to see whether it’s your husband or Elemak who rules once we reach Wetchik’s camp,” said Shedemei.

“Pay no attention to Elya’s bluster,” said Rasa. “It will be my husband who rules.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure. Elemak takes to authority quite naturally.”

“Oh, he likes the feel of it,” said Rasa. “But he doesn’t know how to maintain it except through fear. Doesn’t he realize that the Oversoul is protecting this expedition? If any marauders so much as think of passing this way, the Oversoul will make them forget the idea. We’re as safe as if we were home in bed.”

Shedemei did not remind her that only a few days ago they had felt quite unsafe in their beds. Nor did she mention that Rasa had just proved Shedemei’s own point—when Rasa thought of home and safety, it was Basilica she had in mind. The ghost of their old life in the city was going to haunt them for a long time to come.

Now it was Kokor’s turn to stop her beast and wait for Rasa to catch up. “You were bad, weren’t you, Mama?” she said. “Did nasty old Elemak have to come and tell you off?”

Shedemei was disgusted at Kokor’s little-girl silliness—but then, Kokor usually disgusted her. Her attitude always seemed false and manipulative; to Shedemei the wonder of it was that these pathetically obvious ploys must work on people fairly often, or Kokor would have found new ones.

Well, whoever Kokor’s little-girl act worked on, it
wasn’t
her own mother. Rasa simply fixed Koya with an icy stare and said, “Shedya and I were having a private conversation, my dear. I’m sorry if you misunderstood and thought we had invited you to join us.”

It took just a moment for Kokor to understand; when she did, her face darkened for a moment—with anger? Then she gave a prim little smile to Shedemei and said, “Mother is perpetually disappointed that I didn’t turn out like
you
Shedya. But I’m afraid neither my brain nor my body had enough
inner
beauty.” Then, awkwardly, Kokor got her camel moving fester and soon she was ahead of them again.

Shedemei knew that Kokor had meant to insult her by reminding her that the only kind of beauty she would ever have was the inner kind. But Shedemei had long since grown out of her adolescent jealousy of pulchritudinous girls.

Rasa must have been thinking the same thoughts. “Odd, isn’t it, that physically plain people are perfectly able to see physical beauty in others, while people who are morally maimed are blind to goodness and decency. They honestly think it doesn’t exist.”

“Oh, they know it exists, all right,” said Shedemei. “They just never know which people have it. Not that my feelings at this moment would prove me to be a moral beauty.”

“Having thoughts of murder, were you?” said Rasa.

“Oh, nothing so direct or final,” said Shedemei. “I was just wishing for her to develop truly awful saddle sores.”

“And Elemak? Did you wish some uncomfortable curse on him?”

“Not at all,” said Shedemei. “Perhaps, as you say, he didn’t need to try to frighten us into obedience. But I think he was right. After all, the Oversoul hasn’t had exactly a perfect record in keeping us out of danger. No, I harbor no resentment toward Elya.”

“I wish I were as mature as you, then. I found myself resenting the way he spoke to me. So condescending. I know
why
, of course—he feels my status in the city is a threat to
his
authority out here, so he has to put me in my place. But he should realize that I’m wise enough to follow his leadership without his having to humiliate me first.”

“It isn’t a question of what
you
need,” said Shedemei. “It never is. It’s a question of what
he
needs. He needs to feel superior to you. For that matter, so do I, you silly old woman.”

For a moment Rasa looked at her in horror. Then, just as Shedemei was about to explain that she was
joking
—why didn’t anybody ever understand her humor?—Rasa grinned at her. “I’d rather be a silly old woman than a silly young one,” she said. “Silly
old
women don’t make such spectacular mistakes.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Shedemei. “Coming on this expedition, for instance ...”

“A mistake?”

“For me it certainly is. My life is genetics, but the closest I’m going to come to it for the rest of my life is if I manage to reproduce my
own
genes.”

“You sound so despairing. Having children isn’t all that awful. They aren’t
all
Kokor, and even she may grow up to be human someday.”

“Yes, but you
loved
your husbands,” said Shedemei. “Whom will I end up with, Aunt Rasa? Your crippled son? Or Gaballufix’s librarian?”

“I think Hushidh plans to marry Issib,” said Rasa. Her voice was cold, but Shedemei didn’t care.

“Oh, I know how you’ve got us sorted out. But tell me, Aunt Rasa, if Nafai hadn’t happened to drag the librarian along with him when he was stealing the Index … would you have arranged to bring
me?
”

Rasa’s face was positively stony. She didn’t answer for a long time.

“Come now, Aunt Rasa. I’m not a fool, and I’d rather you not try to fool me.”

“We needed your skills, Shedya. The Oversoul chose you, not me.”

“You’re sure it wasn’t
you
, counting up males and females and making sure we came out even?”

“The Oversoul sent you that dream.”

“The sad thing is,” said Shedemei, “that except for you there’s not a one of us that’s a proven reproducer. For all you know, you’ve set up one of these men with a sterile wife. Or perhaps you’ve put one of us women with a sterile husband.”

Rasa’s anger was beginning to turn from cold to hot now. “I told you, it wasn’t
my
choice … Luet had a vision, too, and—”

“
Are
you going to set the example?
Are
you going to have more children, Aunt Rasa?”

Rasa seemed completely nonplussed. “Me? At my age?”

“You’ve still got a few good eggs in you. I know you haven’t reached menopause, because you’re flowing now.”

Rasa looked at her in consternation. “Why don’t I just lie down under one of your microscopes?”

“You’d never fit. I’d have to slice you razor thin.”

“Sometimes I feel as if you already had.”

“Rasa, you make us stop several times a day. I
know
you have better bladder control than that. We
all
know you’re shedding the tears of the moon.”

Rasa raised her eyebrows briefly, a sort of facial shrug. “More children indeed.”

“I think you must. To set an example for all of us,” said Shedemei. “Don’t you understand that we’re not just taking a trip? We’re a
colony
. The first priority of colonists is reproduction. Anyone who isn’t having babies is next to worthless. And no matter how envious Elemak is of your authority, you
are
the leader of the women here. You must set the pattern for us all. If
you
are willing to get pregnant during this trip, the others will fall into line, particularly since their husbands will feel the need to demonstrate that they can get a woman just as pregnant as old Wetchik can.”