The Worthing Saga (23 page)

“I would rather die than have to tell Jason that I let Linkeree and Batta die.”

So Kapock searched in the forest for three days before he found them, living in a cold wattle-and-daub shelter leaning against a hill. “We're married,” they said, but they were cold and hungry. He gave them some of his cheese and bread, and then together they chose a place on firm ground, but in the shelter of a hill, and they cut switches from a tree and swept away the snow from a section of ground, and all afternoon Kapock and Linkeree and Batta felled and split logs. With the saw Linkeree cut shingles, and in three days the house was built. It was windowless and small, but it was the best they could do in the cold, and it was warm and dry enough inside.

“This house belongs to me as much as you,” Kapock said when it was done.

“That's true,” said Batta.

“I will give you my share of this house, if you will build Hux the same house you burned, the very house, and you must build it alone. Before you do one thing to make your house larger, you must build a line house for Hux.”

“I can only do that in the spring,” said Linkeree. “The work's too fine to hurry it, or do it on soft ground in the snow.”

“In the spring is soon enough.”

Then Kapock went home, and all that winter he and Sara and Ciel lived in First House, with the New Ones, while Hux and Ryanno lived in Kapock and Sara's own house across the river. Every day Kapock and Sara would cross the river and care for the sheep, but whenever Hux and Ryanno wanted to give back their house, Kapock said no—while Linkeree and Batta had a house of their own, Ryanno and Hux would also have a house. Sara saw the wisdom of what Kapock was trying to do, and so she did not complain. And there was peace.

Jason had not said when he would return. For a long time Kapock hoped for him every day. But spring came, and fields were plowed and planted, and then summer, and trees were felled and houses built. It was near autumn when Jason came again. It was early morning, and Kapock and the dogs and Dor, one of last year's New Ones, were taking the sheep to a meadow in the hills southwest of Heaven City. Dor, who knew the way, was leading. Kapock brought up the rear, crook in hand, watching for stragglers. The sheep were drinking at a brook when he heard footsteps behind him. He turned and there was Jason.

“Jason,” Kapock whispered.

Jason smiled and touched him on the shoulder. “I've seen all that happened, all that was important enough for anyone to remember. And you've done well, Kapock. The quarrel between Linkeree and Hux, it could have destroyed Heaven City.”

“I was afraid that everything I did was wrong.”

“Everything you did was right, or as right as anyone could hope for.”

“But I didn't know. I wasn't sure.”

“No one ever is. You did what felt right to you. It's all we ever do. The way I did when I named you Mayor. It worked pretty well for both of us, didn't it?”

Kapock did not know what to say. “Yesterday my Ciel spoke. He called me by name. It's like you said, Jason—the little ones we make aren't as strong as your Ice People, but they learn, and they grow, just like the young lambs becoming rams and ewes. He said my name.”

Jason smiled. “Bring all the people to the west end of First Field, under the arm of Star. Tower, fourteen days from today. I'll come then, and bring New Ones.”

“Everyone will be glad.” And then, “Will you stay?” Stay, so I can be Kapock the shepherd again, instead of Kapock the if Mayor.

“I will not,” Jason said. “I'll never stay again. A few days, a few weeks if there's a need, but never longer than that. But I'll come every year on the same day, for a few more years at least, to bring New Ones.”

“Do I have to be Mayor forever?” asked Kapock.

“No, Kapock. There'll come a time, not too many years from now, when I'll take you with me into the Star Tower, and leave someone else as Mayor. Someone else who doesn't want the job. I'll take you, and then someday, later, I'll bring you back, not a day older than you were before, and you'll see how the world has changed while you slept.”

“I'll be Ice again?”

“You'll be Ice again,” said Jason.

“And Sara? And Ciel?”

“If they earn it,” said Jason.

“Sara will. And Ciel, I'll do my best with Ciel.”

“Enough. Your sheep are waiting. And Dor will wonder who I am. I don't think that he remembers me.”

“Fourteen days,” said Kapock. “They'll be there, all of them. There are nine houses now, and four children born, and live women growing big. Sara again, she's one of them.”

“I know all that,” Jason said. “Goodbye.”

He walked away, and left Kapock with the sheep and the dogs and Dor.

Dor's eyes were bright. “That was Jason, wasn't it!” he said “He talked to you.”

Kapock nodded. “Let's get the sheep to the hills, Dor.” And he told him tales of Jason all the way.

Lared wrote the story as he sat in bed, with the parchment on a board on his lap. Everyone in the house saw him writing, and the women asked him to read it aloud. It was not really about Jason, and Lared saw no harm in it, and so he read the tale.

Before the end they all took sides, some saying that it was Hux in the right, and some saying that it was Linkeree.

When it was done, Sala asked, “Why did Kapock have to lose his house? He and Sara didn't do anything wrong at all.”

Mother answered, “When you love people, you do whatever it takes to make them happy.”

If that is true, thought Lared, why doesn't Justice protect us, the way she and the other children of Jason used to?

When Father came in from tending the animals, they told him the story too and then asked him the question Sala had asked. “He paid the price,” Father said. “Someone has to pay the price.” Then he turned to Lared. “As soon as the weather clears, we're taking the sledges out to bring home the trees you marked. We can't do it without you.”

“No,” said Mother. “He isn't well yet.”

“I'll be ready,” Lared said.

They set out at first light, twenty-two men with eleven teams of horses pulling sledges. Lared led the way, and this year, for the first time since he had begun to mark the trees, he was counted in the total of men. He had marked forty-four trees, four for each team. And Father rode beside him on the foremost.

One by one they came to the trees that Lared had marked. Two men with axes and saws stopped at the fourth tree. They would cut it, then haul it back to the third tree, cut that and go back to the second, then to the first, and then home. Each team, With the surest foresters and the strongest horses saved for last, for they had the farthest to go to bring their timber home. Lared and Father would be last this time. They both had earned it.

Only six of them were still together at nightfall, when they had to make camp. They had brought wattles and poles on the sledges, enough to make a stable for the horses and a large hut for the men. It took only half an hour to set it up—they built the same structure every year, and they practiced doing it in the common field at Midsummer.

“Pretty proud of yourself,” said Jason. “Oh, did I startle you?”

Lared finished cleaning himself with ice-cold leaves and snow. “You wouldn't know what it feels like. No one ever startled you in your life.”

“Every now and then.”

“What am I supposed to be proud of myself about?”

“Riding at the head of the company. And the way you pointed out the weakening at the top of the mast tree, so they agreed that you had to cut it this year, and not wait for it to be the best mast ever to float down the river—you were magnificent.”

“Don't mock me.”

“I wasn't. You earned it. Like my first solo in a cruiser. Rites of passage. I've lived a long time, that's all, and yet I still watch the young ones pass through into responsibility, before they realize that irresponsibility was better, and I can't help but love them for it. There's no better moment in your life.”

“It was,” Lared said, “until you pointed it out.”

“Shall I show you how you looked?”

“What do you mean?”

In a moment he saw it before his eyes, supplanting his own vision: himself as Jason had seen him earlier in the day, talking oh-so-gravely with the older men; Only now he saw the half-veiled smiles. All very good-natured—they liked him—but still patronizing. He was still a boy pretending to be a man. And when the vision faded, he was ashamed. He walked away from Jason in the thickening darkness.

“I thought you'd had enough of wandering off in the snow,” Jason called.

“You and Justice! You with your visions! Have you seen yourselves!”

“Always,” said Jason, walking toward him.

“What do you gain from it? Making me ashamed?”

“Now look at it again.”

“No.”

But protest was meaningless. Again came a vision, but this time it was his own memory, with the way he felt at the time. Riding at the head of the company, talking business with his father, explaining his decisions about each tree to the listening men. Only now there were his present bitterness and shame like tinted glass, coloring everything darker. He felt again the happiness he had felt all day. Only now he thought himself a fool, and was angry.

“Stop it!” he shouted.

“Lared!” His father's voice rang out from the distant camp. “Is something wrong?”

“No, Father!” Lared called back to him.

“Come on back, then. It's getting dark, if you can't see it!”

Lared could not answer, for again Justice put a vision in his eyes. The same memories of the same day, but this time not through Jason's eyes, nor through his own, but rather himself the way his father saw him. Constantly through the day as Lared spoke, Father saw that he was foolish, but also remembered him younger, remembered him as a child; remembered too himself on such a day. Remembered the boy who clung numbly to a chip of river ice, for the sake of honor or faith or manhood. The love and admiration were so intense that when the vision at last faded, Lared's eyes were filled with tears. He had never been a father, but he remembered fatherhood, and he ached for a little child that was gone forever, that he had never held, that had been himself.

“What are you doing to me?” he whispered.

A branch cracked overhead, and snow dribbled down near them.

“This is the last time,” Jason answered.

The same scenes, in his own memory again. Only this time he saw himself more clearly than before. He no longer believed the happiness, of course, but neither did he believe the scorn. He saw himself as if from the distance of years. He saw that he was young, but he did not hold it against himself. He saw also that he was happy, but he did not wish that he still felt that way. He remembered too well the pain of discovering how foolish he had been. He saw himself more as Father had seen him, as a boy on a path of years, echoing childhood with every move, promising manhood also. And that combination of foolish happiness, shame, and love—meant something. Until then, the memories had meant nothing. But these visions of today had taken on a powerful resonance; his whole life trembled with it. And yet Lared could not think why this day should be so important, after all.

Jason leaned close to him, held him by the shoulders, almost in an embrace. “Were you happy before?”

“Before what?”

“Before we showed you how it really was?”

“Yes. I was happy.” And the remembered happiness was somehow stronger than the happiness itself had been.

“And then what?”

“Angry. Ashamed.” Was it the pain, then, that made the joy so strong? Was that Jason's lesson? Truth or not, Lared was not grateful. He did not like being carved into whatever shape suited Jason's purpose at the time, jammed in place and wedged like the handle of an axe.

“Now, Lared. What is it that you feel now?” asked Jason.

I've been wounded, and you're using the bloody place to teach me, and if that's what gods are supposed to do, then I wish there were no gods at all. “I don't want you near me.” He ran from Jason toward the light of the cookfire.

As he ran, Justice spoke to him comfortingly in his mind. Joy, Lared. What you feel is if joy. The happiness, the pain, the love. All at once. Remember it.

Get out of my mind!. Lared screamed inside himself.

But he lay awake, remembering it.

“Lared,” said Father, lying beside him. “We were all proud of you today.”

Lared did not want to be lied to, and he knew the truth; “The others laughed at me.”

Father did not answer at once. “With affection, yes. They like you.” A longer silence. “I didn't laugh at you.”

“I chose the right trees.”

“Yes, Lared.”

“Then why did they laugh?”

“Because you were so proud of the first horse. They all rode the first horse once.”

“They laughed because I was strutting like a cock in the chicken yard.”

“Yes,” said Father. “What are you, God? Must everyone always take you seriously?”

It sounded harsh, but Father's hand on his arm told him that it was meant kindly. “Like I said, Lareled. I was proud of you today.”

Lared felt Jason's blue eyes burning inside his mind. I am alone with my father, Jason. Can't I be alone with him? He felt Justice haunting him, ready to put a veil across his sight and make him see whatever dream she chose. Because you give them to me, Justice, have I forgotten how to dream?

What are you, Jason? God, that's what you are. Going into and out of your starship, never aging as your people lived and died. A select few you took with you, and they too passed the time and stayed young. Kapock was taken up before his son was grown; Sara too left little ones behind. You gave them great prestige, and cut them off from all that they loved. They worshiped you, Jason Worthing, and what did they gain from it? Anyone can tell a lie to children, and win their love. It worked with me.

Ah, whispered Justice in his mind. So you don't like the way that they believed in Jason. You prefer doubt. You prefer those A who know what Jason really is.

Lared remembered the one bubble that had been preserved. Garol Stipock. The one man who could remember Capitol, who knew that Jazz Worthing was mortal. A man who had once sought to prove it. You gave him his memory?