The Worthing Saga (38 page)

Mercy was the firstborn, and a boy; Justice was his sister. Their mother had known them well in the womb—their names fit them. Mercy could not bear it for another to suffer anything; Justice was sterner, and insisted on fairness and equity regardless of the cost.

Justice's name was not just decorative; it was the path that pulled her through the wilderness of childhood. For almost as soon as she could walk and burble sounds, she began to reach into the memories of those around her, or the memories were forced on her against her will. Father, Mother and the thousand other lives that dwelt within their minds, all the other
I
's, all the events of their lives that mattered enough to be held in memory, and somehow in all this Justice had to remember who she was, which memories were hers. She herself was so small, her life so slight, that for a long while she was lost. What brought her out into a sane world, knowing who she was, was that need to set things to rights, to make things balance, to have all right things rewarded, all wrong things done away.

She also emerged from childhood with a yearning to be more like Mercy, her compassionate brother. In ways they were alike they both lived in dread of undeserved suffering. But Mercy's desire was to bear the misery himself, to simply take it from the sufferer. Justice, on the other hand, sought to find the cause of it, to strike it at the root. She had to know the why of everything. It was a trial to her teachers. Mercy was able to become a Watcher at a very early age, because he had a keen sense of other people's pain, and soon mastered the technique of healing it. Justice, on the other hand, kept getting distracted from the main task. Her teacher wondered to her once, What if it should turn out that you are not a Watcher? There are other works to do, which must be done.

I will Watch, said Justice silently, because Mercy Watches.

So she left behind the games of childhood still unready for Watching, and spent her youth perched in the trees of the School, bending herself to a task that came so easily to Mercy, that was such agony for her. She dwelt in his mind as often as he would let her, to try to discover what it was that made him so quick to sense a hunger and satisfy it, so good at finding pain and healing it. But it was no particular skill that she could find. Until at last she realized that it was this: Mercy loved at once anyone he knew, and cared more for their joy than for his own. Justice, on the other hand, loved almost no one, but instead measured each person against the standard of what that person believed was right and wrong. Few people were good by such a measure, and Justice's love was not easily given. So when she tried to Watch, she had to learn it as an unnatural skill, and she was twenty years old before she finally left the School trees and was taken into Pools.

By that time all her childhood friends had been Watching for years, and Mercy was already a master, entrusted with the Watching of a world for a third of every day. Still, Justice did not condemn herself for being so slow. She was just even with herself; she knew she was succeeding at a task she was not suited for, and so the price she had to pay was higher.

She passed her trial hour on a day, and on the next day went to Pools for the first time to Watch alone. She came to Gardens, shed her gown to dress herself in wind, and found a Pool with room for her. Gently she lowered herself to her knees in the shallow water, then lay forward until her face was flat on the smooth pebbles. Toes, belly, breasts, and face were in the cold water; heels, buttocks, back, and ears were in the breeze that scattered tree-cotton across the surface of the water. She did not breathe, but that was almost second nature now; how many hours as a child had she hung upside down from a tree branch, learning to close off her body and free her mind to wander among the stars.

Because she was so new, she was allowed to Watch only a village on a primitive world that still shunned electricity, had not yet turned to steam. It was a little place beside a river, with one inn, whose keeper was also the blacksmith—that's how small the village was.

She came to the village in the last hour of night, so there were no waking eyes for her to see through. Instead she coasted the currents of life itself, the dim wash from the serene and stupid trees, the frantic energy of the nightbirds, the beasts of dawn looking for water or salt. She thought, in such an hour as this, that Watching would be joyful.

Just as hunger awoke the first child of the village, she felt a hand on her shoulder. It was Mercy, she knew at once. She did not lift her face from the pool, for Watchers never do. Gently his fingers pressed up and down her back, to say, This is life, you are alive now. She did not need to make any answer to tell him that she heard. But he was not through. Of course he could not speak into her mind—her mind was closed to any thoughts but those of the village that she Watched—so he spoke to her in words, aloud. She hardly knew his voice, or perhaps it was the water that made it strange to her. “They say that Justice is bright and beautiful, and she brings equity behind her eyes. They say my sister is dark and terrible, for she can live with truth.”

The words chilled her like his breath on her wet cheek. She dared not leave the village long enough to look into his mind, even if it were open to her. But there was something final in his words, and it made her afraid. He was bidding her goodbye, and she could not understand it.

Or is it a test? On the first full day alone, do they try all new Watchers by giving them dreadful words from the one they love the best? If it is a test, I will not fail it. She kept her face in the water, kept her mind among the villagers, and Mercy went away.

Justice began to have eyes to see with, sleepy, rubbed eyes as cows and ewes were milked and porridges were stirred over heart fires. Everything was wood and wicker, pottery and leather—it was an old place, a once-lost place, where the machines did not help the Watchers in their work. Here the horses pissed hot in their stalls, dust seeped unfiltered into houses, children let caterpillars crawl up their arms, and one Watcher had to care for each town, so many things could harm them.

A child began to choke on a sausage. The parents looked up, uncertain what to do. Justice spasmed the child's diaphragm, ejecting the sausage onto the table. The child laughed, and thought of doing it again, but Justice let his mother scold him, and the child stopped. Justice had no time to waste with games at the breakfast table.

The cobbler sheared off his thumb along with the leather he was cutting. He was not used to pain, and screamed, but Justice took the pain from him, made him pick up the half thumb from the bench and put it back in place. It was a simple thing to grow vein to vein, nerve to nerve, and then reach into his mind and take away the memory. She also made his wife forget she heard the sound of terror in his cry. What you do not remember, did not happen.

There was anger, which she calmed. There was fear, which she comforted. There was pain and injury, and she healed all. Disease could not take root, for she quickened the body's power to purify itself. Even hunger could not last, for everyone wanted to work hard in the morning, as Justice spread vigor through the village with the dawn, and soon the fields were dotted with workers, and bench and barrel, forge and oven had its worker in place.

In the afternoon an old mans heart stopped beating. Justice quickly did the death check. It would take more than three minutes' work to heal him; he had no children under twenty; his wife was healthy of mind and heart; and so he would be allowed to die. Instead of healing him, Justice brought his son to his house, the thirty-year-old innkeeper with blacksmith's arms. She kept the young man's mind a blank; he did not recognize the old man, merely picked him up and carried him out to the burying place, where friends were waiting with a hole half-dug. Within the hour the old man was laid into the ground. The men who dug the hole would remember the burying, but they remembered it as long past, a year ago, and they had long since got over the grief of the old man's death.

On his way back home, Justice put into the mind of the dead man's son all the joyful moments of his childhood in his home, a generous eulogy; but he believed that he had only walked to his grandfather's year-old grave today, to remember him on the anniversary of his passing.

The dead man's widow blankly packed up all she owned and moved into her son's inn, where she was given a bed in the wall downstairs not far from the fire, with her grandson near her in a truckle bed, and her granddaughter across the room. She was long since past grieving, or even feeling strange to live with her daughter-in-law. Everyone was comfortable with each other by now, and life went smoothly on, with Grandfather a beloved memory and no grief to darken their days.

She tended wombs, to be sure the right ones were filled and the rest stayed empty; she came to the aid of the girl who decided it was time not to be a virgin, and made it a pleasure to her, despite the boy's overeagerness. And at last night came to the village, and the Sleep Watchers touched her gently and told her she was through. Good work, they said silently, and Justice lifted her face from the pool hot with pride, cold from the breeze on her wet face and body. It was noon on Worthing, and the skin of her back and buttocks and thighs was hot and brown. She let the breeze dry her, saying nothing to the other Watchers who had shared Pool with her.

She walked into Garden, and then allowed herself to breathe, letting the air come like snow into her throat. She untied her hair and let it fall over her shoulders. Five more days of Watching, and if she did well they would let her cut her hair. She would be a woman then, her test completed.

She found her clothing and put it on. Only then did her friend Grave come to her, and tell her the news.

They've found God, he said silently. In his starship at the bottom of the sea. He's asleep, but we can wake him if we want. One thing is certain, though. He's just a man.

Justice laughed. Of course he's just a man—we knew that, didn't we? We
are
his children.

No, Grave told her. Just a
man.

And she understood now, that Jason Worthing, the father of their race, did not have their power after all.

Oh, he could see behind the eyes, but he couldn't
put
anything there, he couldn't
change
anything.

Poor man, thought Justice. To have eyes, but then no hands to touch with, no lips to speak with. To be dumb and motionless in the mind, and yet see—what torture it must have been. Better to leave him sleeping. What will he make of us, his children, if he's such a cripple among us?

There are those, said Grave silently, who want to waken him anyway. To have him judge us.

Do we need judging?

If he is strong enough to bear the disappointment of not being as powerful; as we are, then they say we ought to waken him and see what he can teach us—what other man is living who knew the universe
before
we began to Watch? He can compare, and tell us if our work is good.

Of course it is; And if he is too weak to bear inferiority, then we have only to change his memory and send him somewhere else.

Grave shook his head. Why wake him, if we only mean to take away his memory? What good, then, were all his centuries of sleep?

When a man is grieved or sick or weak, we heal him.

He has memories that are otherwise lost to the world.

Then learn his memories and heal him.

Justice, he is our father.

Then it comes to special cases, and that is unjust. Bring him up because he is alive, and heal him if he is in pain. There's no reason to determine first if it would cause him harm or not. Especially since we could not find
that
out unless we float the stone—

And she realized then what Grave had hoped to hide from her, at least for a while longer, that they had already decided to float the stone while she was Watching, and that her own brother Mercy was to do it.

Justice waited for no other thought from Grave; she ran at once to the Hall of Rock. All she could think of as she ran was that Mercy had come to bid her goodbye, had known even then what he meant to do, and had not told her. It was not because she was in Pools; he had waited till she was there before coming to her, so she would not try to stop him. But she must stop him, for to look into the mind of the dead meant death or madness. Of course Mercy would say, Let me be the one. Here I am, let me—he would gladly give his mind or his life to dwell within the mind of God.

When Justice got there it already was too late. Only she, of all who were not at that moment Watching, only she had not been told of this. Everyone else was gathered, here or at the other Halls of Rock, and they already waited inside Mercy's mind. He lay on his back on a flat rock, his arms spread out to hold him as the stone softened under him, let his body sink gently. The breeze began to ripple the surface of the stone, as Mercy arched his back and let his head sink downward into the stone, down until his whole head was immersed.

She had no choice, then, but to join the others, as if she were a willing participant in this act—could not bear to be the only one who was not with him in his sacrifice.

As she looked beneath the stone, she felt within her a familiar mind. It was her mother, and she said, Welcome, Justice.

How could you let him! cried Justice in her anguish.

How could we not, when he wanted so much to do it, and it needed to be done?

It isn't fair for him to give all; when I give nothing.

Ah, said Mother silently, so it comes to fairness after all. You want to match your brother pain for pain.

Yes.

You can't. Even if you wanted to, you could not float the stone. It takes more compassion than you were born with—there are few of us who could. But you can help us, all the same. You know Mercy better than anyone. When the mind of God is in him, you better than anyone can tell us how much of himself is Mercy, and how much is Jason Worthing. And with your perfect sense of measure, you can tell us when the ordeal is done, and from you we can learn what we should do.