The Worthing Saga

by Orson Scott Card

  The man put a single shining jewel on the table.

  Mother looked at it with contempt. “What can I do with that? Will it draw grain out of the soil? Will it make my husband's forge burn hotter? Will it heal the scabs on my arm?” But she reached out and took it. “Is it real?” she asked them; and then, helpless in the face of their silence, she asked Sala, “Is it real?”

  “It's perfect,” said Sala. “It's worth the price of every farm in Flat Harbor, and every building, and all the earth that's under it and all the air that's over it and all the water that runs through it.” And she put her hand to her mouth to stop the torrent of words.

  “Get the book they asked for,” Mother said to Lared. Then she turned sullenly back to the gruel.

  Lared ran upstairs, to the room where the body of the old clerk lay. The eyes were closed, with pebbles on them. The belly under the blanket was slack. Did it move, just a little, with a faint breath?

  “Sir?” whispered Lared. But there was no answer. Lared went to the pack the old man had so heavily borne. Five books were within it, and a sheaf of parchment, perhaps twenty sheets, with a small horn of ink and several quills. Lared knew something of making parchment, and one of the first lessons of winter school was to sharpen and split a quill for writing. The ink was a mystery, though. Lared reluctantly set the inkhorn back in the pack; he had been given books, not the tools of making books. He quickly sorted out the titles from the decorations of the tooled leather covers; never did cattle and sheep so docilely lie together as in the sheepskin pages and the cowskin covers of a book. The Finding of the Stars.

  He had barely set the other books aside when he heard footsteps on the stairs. It was Father, come with Han Carpenter to take away the corpse. Their boots were lightly crusted with soil the grave was already dug.

  “Come to rob the dead?” asked Han cheerfully.

  “He gave the books to me.”

  Father shook his head. “Han thinks there's jests to make in death rooms.”

  “Keep the ghosts at bay,” said Han. “If they're laughing, they'll cause you no pain.”

  Lared looked suspiciously at the old clerk's body. Had he a ghost, perhaps? And did that ghost bear sharp penknives, ready to carve Lared like a quill, perhaps when he slept? Lared shuddered. To believe such things would be the end of sleep.

  “Take the books, lad,” Father said. “They're yours. But be careful with them. They're worth the price of the iron I'll use in my life.”

  Lared made a wide circle around the bed, where Father and Han were winding the old man in a faded horseblanket—it would make no sense to send the good cloth into the ground with the dead. Lared left the room and fairly flew down the stairs. His mother's fingers caught him at the bottom, stopping him, nearly pulling him off his feet. “What, do you want another burial today? Be careful, there's no angels now to pick up your feet when you start to fall.”

  Lared pulled away, answered sharply: “I didn't stumble till you near pulled me down!”

  She slapped his face harshly, hurting his neck and leaving his cheek stinging. They looked at each other in surprise.

  “I'm sorry,” Lared whispered.

  Mother said nothing, only turned back to the table to set out the horn spoons for their guests. She did not know they had walked on water, but she did guess the worth of the jewel they gave her, and that was miracle enough to warrant the best treatment.

  Lared did not want to go to the strangers now, however, for they had seen him ashamed and in pain. In spite of himself there were tears in his eyes—no one had purposely hurt him in his life, and though the pain was fading, the fear of it was not. “She never,” he began to explain in a whisper, but they spoke into his mind again, spoke calmly to him, and he handed the Finding of the Stars to them.

  The man held the book, opened it and traced the words with his finger. Lared saw at once that he could not read, for his finger moved from left to right instead of from the top to the bottom of the page. You can do miracles, but you cannot read, Lared thought triumphantly.

  Almost at once an image leapt into his mind, of pages of strange words in even stranger letters, letters that spread across the page loosely, as if the parchment were not hours of labor and the ink not worth its volume in hard-earned tin. Then he saw, as if in memory, the young woman bending over the page. “Sorry,” he murmured.

  The man pointed at the first word, drew his finger down the first sentence, and asked with his eyes. Read, said the silent voice in Lared's mind.

  “After the worlds were slain by Abner Doon, ten thousand years of darkness passed before the fires again burned their threads between the stars.”

  The man's eyes grew wide. “Abner Doon,” he said aloud.

  Lared pointed at the two words.

  Only two letters to say this man's name? asked the silent voice.

  “No—those are words, not letters.” Lared got a kindling twig from the fire box and drew in the thin dust on the floor. “Here's ab, and here's un, and here's er, and they fit together like this. This tie tells you that the un is quick, and this one that the ab is longest, and the binding tells you that the words are names.”

  The man and woman looked at each other in surprise, and then laughed. At Lared? He thought not.

  No, said the voice in his mind. Not at you. At ourselves. We thought to learn your language and your writing, but it's plain your letters are too hard for us.

  “No, they're easy,” said Lared. “There are only a hundred ninety-eight letters, and thirteen ties, and seven bindings at the ends.”

  They laughed again, and the man shook his head. Then he got an idea. “Jason,” he said, pointing to himself. “Jason. And the voice in Lared's mind said, Write.”

  So he wrote: J and es, and un, and joined them to make it say jesun, and bound it to say, not name, but name of God. It was a dignity only offered to great rulers, but Lared did not hesitate to use it with this man. With Jason.

  But apparently the man could understand somehow what the binding meant. He took the stick from Lared's hand and put the binding of God's name on the word of Abner, and put the common name binding on his own name.

  An image came into Lared's mind, of a small man dressed in a strange and ugly costume, smiling with mocking amusement. Lared didn't like him. The voice in his mind said, Abner Doon.

  “You knew him?” asked Lared. “The Unmaker of the Universe? The Breaker of Man? The Waker from the Sleep of Life?”

  The man shook his head. Lared thought he meant that he did not know Abner Doon. How could he, after all, unless he was a devil, too? That thought crossed Lared's mind. Their powers were more than human; how did Lared know that they were good?

  In answer came a soothing feeling, a warmth, a calm, and Lared shuddered. How could he doubt them? And yet, even deeper, he still asked himself, How can I not doubt them? They come too near to the Day of Pain.

  Jason handed him the book again. Read, said the voice in his mind.

  He understood only some of what he read. Making the sounds was easy, since he knew the alphabet. But many of the words were too hard for him. What did he know of starships and worlds and explorers and embassies? He thought that perhaps the two strangers would explain to him what the words meant.

  We can't.

  “Why not?” he asked.

  Because the words mean nothing to us. What we understand is your understanding of them. What you don't know, we can't know.

  “Then why don't you learn our language, if you're so wise?”

  “Don't be fresh,” said Mother from the kitchen, where she was grinding the dried pease for the pot.

  Lared was angry. She understood nothing of the conversation, but still could tell when Lared was doing something wrong. Jason reached out and touched him on the knee. Be calm. It's all right. The words weren't put in his head, but he understood them all the same, from the gentle hand, from the calm smile.

  Jason will learn your language, said the voice in his mind. But Justice
will not.

  “Justice?” said Lared, not realizing at first that this was the woman's name.

  She touched herself and echoed his word. “Justice,” she said. Her voice was uncertain and soft, as if little used. “Justice,” she said again. Then laughed, and said an incomprehensible word in a language Lared had never heard before.

  That is my name, said the voice in his mind. Justice. Jason's name is mere sound, the same no matter what language you speak. But my name is the idea, and the sound of it changes A from language to language.

  It made no sense to Lared. “A name's a name. It means you, and so what if it means something else besides?”

  They looked at each other.

  Tell us, are there words about any place named...

  And Justice said a word: “Worthing.”

  Lared tried out the name on his tongue. “Worthing,” he said. Then he wrote down the name in the dirt, so he would be sure to know the sign for it, if he met it in the book.

  He did not notice that at the saying of the name Mother's eyebrows rose, and she slipped out of the kitchen without so much as an I'll-be-back.

  He found Worthing at the end of the book. “It was believed for thousands of years that two of Doon's Arks had gone astray, or their colonies had failed. Indeed, if Rivethock's Ark resulted in a colony, it remains unfound to this day. The world called Worthing, however, from Worthing's Ark, was found at last, by a Discoverer IV-class ship in the Fifth Wave, whose geologer marked the planet as habitable—and then, to the shock of the crew, was inhabited.”

  This time, where the words were hard, brief explanations often came into Lared's mind, using ideas that he was familiar with. Doon's Arks were huge starships equipped with everything that 334 passengers would need to start a world. A colony was a village in newly cleared land on a world without human beings. A Discoverer IV of the Fifth Wave was—a starship sent by the government to chart the inner reaches of the galaxy some five thousand years ago. Ageologer was a machine, or a group of machines, that looked at a world from far away and saw where lay all forests and oil and iron and farmland and ice and ocean and life.

  And if we read at this rate we'll get nowhere, said the voice in his mind. The impatience on Justice's face matched the words, and for the first time it occurred to Lared that it might be only Justice who spoke to him. For Jason only smiled at whatever she silently said to him, and when he answered her it was in words from their strange language, spoken aloud.

  “Who are you?” demanded Father.

  He stood at the door that led into the kitchen shed, his strong arms and massive shoulders filling door, silhouetting him against the light from the kitchen tire.

  “They're Jason and Justice,” said Sala.

  “who are you?” asked Father again. “I'll not be answered by my children's voices.”

  The words came into Lared's mind, and he spoke them. “You'll not be answered any other way. Don't blame us, Father— they only speak to me because they don't know another way. Jason plans to learn our language as soon as he can.”

  “Who are you?” asked Father a third time. “You dared to cause my child to say the dark name, the hidden word, and him not yet sixteen.”

  “What hidden name?” asked Lared.

  Father could not force himself to say it. Instead he walked to where Lared had written the sign of it upon the ground, and scraped the mark away with his foot.

  Jason laughed, and Justice sighed, and Lared spoke without waiting for them to give him words. “Father, I found the name Worthing in the old cleric's book. It's just the name of a world.”

  Father slapped Lared sharply on the face. “There is a time and place for uttering the name, and that is not here.”

  Lared could not help but cry out from the pain—he had no strategies for coping with this unhabitual distress. It was too cruel, that with the coming of pain the greatest danger of it should be, not from fire or water or beast, but from Father. So even after the first impact of the pain wore off, Lared could not keep himself from whimpering like a bee-stung dog.

  Suddenly Jason slapped the table and jumped to his feet. Justice tried to hold him back, but he stammered out a few words that they could understand. “Name of my,” he said. “Name this mying be.”

  Father squinted, as if seeing better would help him understand the twisted words. Lared translated for him. “I think he means that his name is—is the name.”

  Jason nodded.

  “I thought you said your name was Jason.”

  “Name of my is Jason Worthing.”

  “My name is Jason Worthing,” prompted Lared.

  The moment Lared uttered Worthing, Father's hand snaked out to slap him again. But Jason was quicker, and caught the blacksmith's hand in mid-act.

  “There's no man in Flat Harbor,” said Father, “who dares to match strength with me.”

  Jason only smiled.

  Father tried to move his hand again, but Jason tightened his fingers almost imperceptibly, and Father cried out in pain.

  Justice too cried out as if the pain had touched her. The two of them babbled in angry language as Father held his wrist, gasping. When Father could speak again, he ignored them, too.

  “I don't need them as guests, and I don't need you getting into forbidden things. They're going, and you won't have another thing to do with them until they're gone.”

  Jason and Justice left off their argument and heard the end of his speech. As if to stop the blacksmith, Justice took from her clothing a thin bar of pure gold; she bent it to show its softness.

  Father reached for the gold and took it. Between two fingers he folded the bar fiat, and with two hands folded it again, and tossed it against the front door. “This is my house, and this is my son, and we have no need of you.”

  Then Father led Lared from the room, unfed and unhappy, to the forge where the fire already was growing hot.

  Lared worked there all morning, hungry and angry, but not daring to do anything but what his father asked. They both knew that Lared hated the work at the forge, that he had no desire at all to learn the secrets of smithing. He did what he had to, just the way he bore his share in the field and no more. Usually that was enough for Father, but not today.

  “There are things you'll learn from me,” Father shouted above the roar of the flames. “There are things no half-witted strangers are going to teach you!”

  They aren't half-witted, Lared said silently. Unlike Justice, however, when he held his tongue his words went unremarked. It was one of the things he did best, holding his tongue.

  “You're no good at smithing, I know that, you've got weak arms like your mother's father, narrow, shoulders. I haven't pushed you, have I?”

  Lared shook his head.

  “Pump harder.”

  Lared bore down on the bellows, pumped faster even though his back ached.

  “And in the fields, you're a decent hand, and if you aren't big enough yet fora man's load, you're good at mushrooms and herbs and I won't even be ashamed of you if you end up a swine herd. God help me, I'll even bear having my son be the goose boy.”

  “I'll be no goose boy, Father.” Father often made things out worse than they really were, for effect.

  “Better goose boy than a clerk! There's no work for a clerk in Flat Harbor, no need for one.”

  “I'm not a clerk. I'm not good enough at numbers, and I don't know but half the words in the book.”

  Father struck the iron so hard that it split, and he cast the piece that was in the tongs onto the stone floor, where it broke again. “Name of God, I don't want you not to be a clerk because you're not good enough! You're good enough to be a clerk! But I'd be ashamed to have at son of mine be no more useful than to scratch letters on leather all day long!”

  Lared leaned on the bellows handle and studied his father. How has the coming of pain changed you? You're no more careful of your hands at the forge. You stand as close to the fire as ever, though all others who work near fire have
taken to standing back far, and there's been a rash of calls for long strong sticks for spoons twice as long as anyone thought to want before. You haven't asked for longer tongs, though. So what has changed?

  “If you become a clerk,” Father said, “then there'll be nothing for you but to leave Flat Harbor. Live in Endwater Havens, or Cleaving, somewhere far.”

  Lared smiled bitterly. “It can't happen a day too soon for Mother.”

  Father shrugged impatiently. “Don't be a fool. You just look too much like her father, that's all. She means no harm.”

  “Sometimes,” Lared said, “I think the only one who has a use for me is Sala.” Until now. Until the strangers came.

  “I have a use for you.”

  “Do I pull bellows for you until you die? And afterward pull for whoever takes your place? Here's the truth, Father. I don't want to leave Flat Harbor. I don't want to be a clerk. Except maybe to read for a guest or two, especially late in the year, like now, with nothing to do but leather work and spinning and weaving and slaughter. Other men make up songs. You make up songs.”

  Father picked up the wasted iron and put the pieces in the scrap pile. Another bar was heating in the forge. “Pull the bellows, Lareled.”

  The affectionate name was Lared's answer. Father's anger was only temporary, and he'd not bar him from reading, when it didn't keep him from work. Lared sang as he pulled the bellows.

  “Squirrilel, squirrilel, where go the nuts?

  In holes in the ground or in poor farmers' huts?

  Steal from my barn and I'll string out your guts

  To make songs with my lyre

  Or sausaging wire

  Or tie off the bull so he no longer ruts.”

  Father laughed. He had made up the song himself when the whole village gathered in the inn during the worst of last winter. It was an honor, to have a song remembered, especially by your gown son. Lared knew it would please his father, but there was no calculation in his singing. He did love his father, and wanted him to be glad, though he had no common ground with him, and was in no way like him.