Earthborn (Homecoming)

by Orson Scott Card

  Whoever it was had trouble with the latch. One of the little girls, then. Surely a teacher could have dealt with her problem without sending her unassisted to the schoolmaster’s office.

  Shedemei got up and opened the door. Not one of the little girls at all. It was Voozhum. “Mother Voozhum,” she said, “come in, sit down. You don’t have to come to my office, just send one of the girls for me and I will come to you.”

  “That wouldn’t be fitting,” said Voozhum, easing herself onto one of the stools; chairs were no good for earth people, especially the old and inflexible.

  “I won’t argue with you,” said Shedemei. “But age has its privileges and you should take advantage of them now and then.”

  “I do,” said Voozhum. “With people who are younger than me.”

  Shedemei hated it when Voozhum tried to get her to admit that she was the One-Who-Was-Never-Buried. It bothered her to lie to Voozhum, but she also couldn’t trust the old soul to remember that she was supposed to keep it secret.

  “I’ve never met anybody older than you,” said Shedemei. “Now, what business brings you here?”

  “I had a dream,” said Voozhum. “A real wake-up-with-a-wet-bed humdinger.”

  Shedemei didn’t know whether to be amused or annoyed with Voozhum’s complacency toward her increasingly frequent incontinence. “There have been several of those recently, as I recall.”

  Ignoring her gibe, Voozhum said, “I thought you ought to be warned—Akma is coming here today.”

  Shedemei sighed. Just what she needed. “Have you told Edhadeya?”

  “So she can run off and hide? No, it’s time the girl faced her future.”

  “It’s Edhadeya’s choice whether Akma has anything to do with her future, don’t you think?”

  “No I don’t,” said Voozhum. “She grabs at every scrap of news about the boy. She knows that he’s changed. I’ve seen her pining after him, and then when I mention Akma she gets that prim look on her face and says, I’m glad he’s stopped interfering with things, but excuse me I’ve got work to do. She practically lived at Akmaro’s house during the three days that Akma was getting worked over by the Keeper, but as soon as he wakes up she refuses to leave the school. I think she’s a coward.”

  “Akma has changed,” said Shedemei. “It’s natural for her to fear that his feelings toward her might also have changed.”

  “That’s not what she’s afraid of,” said Voozhum scornfully. “She knows they’re bound together heart to heart. She’s afraid of you.”

  “Me?”

  “She’s afraid that if she marries Akma, you won’t let her have the school.”

  “Have the school! What, am I dying and no one told me? I have the school.”

  “She has the foolish idea that she’s younger than you and might outlive you,” said Voozhum nastily. “She doesn’t know what I know.”

  “Well, I suppose that eventually I will give up the school.”

  “But will you give it to a married woman who has to deal with her husband’s demands?”

  “It’s premature to marry them off,” said Shedemei. “And premature to decide whether she’ll have the freedom to take the school, and damnably premature to be thinking about when I’m going to leave, because I can promise you it won’t be soon.”

  “Well tell her that! Tell her she’ll have time for half a dozen babies before the schoolmastership comes open. Have some consideration for other people’s uncertainties, why don’t you!”

  Shedemei burst into laughter. “You certainly don’t talk to me as if you really believed I was a minor deity.”

  “When gods come down to become women, I think they should get the full experience, no holds barred. Besides, what are you going to do, strike me dead? I could keel over any minute. Every time I make it across the courtyard to my bedroom, I think, Well, it didn’t kill me after all.”

  “I’ve offered to let you sleep right next to your classroom.”

  “Don’t be absurd. I need the exercise. And unlike some people, I’m not interested in living forever. I don’t have to know how things come out.”

  “Neither do I, really,” said Shedemei. “Not anymore.”

  “All I came here to say, if you’re finally ready to listen, is that this is Akma’s first time coming out. Still a little unsteady on his feet. And I think it’s significant that he chose to come here. Not just for Edhadeya’s sake.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “In my dream I saw a fine young human man, a beautiful woman right behind him, and in one hand he held the hand of an old angel, and in the other the hand of a positively decrepit digger woman who looked awful enough that I could imagine she was me. A voice said to me, in the ancient language of my people, This is the fulfillment of an ancient dream, and a promise of glorious times to come.”

  “I see,” said Shedemei. “The Keeper wants a bit of spectacle.”

  “I think it would be wise to have children spread the word as soon as he arrives. I think it needs to be seen and reported widely. I think we need an audience.”

  Shedemei rose from her chair. “If that’s what the wise woman of the tunnels says should happen, then it will happen. You stay here near the front door. I’ll fetch the other players in our little drama.”

  Akma asked his parents to go with him, but they refused. “You don’t need us,” they said. “You’re only going to Shedemei’s school. You don’t need us to speak for you.”

  But he did; he was shy about facing the world. Not because he was unwilling to accept the public shame that would come to him—he would almost welcome that, because he knew that it was part of his lifelong labor, to heal Darakemba of the harm that he had done. No, he was simply afraid that he wouldn’t know what to say, that he’d do it wrong, that he’d cause more harm. Remembering how it had been to have all his crimes stand present before him, he was very much afraid of doing anything to add to their already unbearable number. Even though he now searched his heart and found nothing there but the desire to serve the Keeper, he also knew that the pride that had so distorted his life was still waiting somewhere in his heart. Maybe someday he could trust that he had fully overcome it, that the devoted servant of the Keeper was his true self forever; but for now he was afraid of himself, afraid that the moment he was in public life he would begin to gather people to himself as he had done before, and that instead of using this power for their own good, he would again seek adulation the way wine-mad souls lived only for another jar.

  He worried about this because he couldn’t see the change in himself. His parents saw, though, as he reluctantly left the house and walked out into the street; they remembered well how he used to walk as if displaying himself, engaging the eyes of every passerby, insisting, demanding that they look at him with liking before he would release their gaze. Now he walked, not in shame, but without self-awareness. He looked at others, not to get their love, but to understand them a little, to wonder who they were. Like the Keeper, he kept himself almost invisible on the street, yet saw all. Akmaro and Chebeya watched him out of sight, then embraced in the doorway and went inside.

  Too soon Akma reached the corner where Rasaro’s House occupied all the buildings. He had never been to the school before, but had no trouble finding it—the place was famous. He had the odd notion that his visit was looked for, that there were people watching from the windows as he approached. But how could they know he was coming? He had only decided it himself this morning, and told no one but his parents. They would not have spread the word.

  At the door he was met by a stern-looking woman twice his age. “Welcome, Akma. I’m Shedemei,” she said. “I know you because I examined you while you were lying there pretending to be dead at your mother’s house.”

  “I know,” he said. “I came to thank you. Among other things.”

  “Nothing to thank me for,” she said. “I told them what they already knew—that you weren’t dead yet and it would be up to the Keeper whether you survived
. I hope you’re going to write down your experience during those three days of . . . whatever it was.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it,” he said. “I couldn’t write it anyway. I would have to enumerate all my crimes, and they’re innumerable.” To his surprise he was able to say this in a calm voice, without a hint of either pleading or jauntiness.

  “Well, you’ve thanked me,” said Shedemei. “Why else did you come?”

  “I don’t really know,” he said. “I hoped to see Edhadeya, but that’s not the only reason that I came. I just woke up this morning knowing that it was time to come outside, and that it was here I had to come. It was only afterward that I remembered Edhadeya would be here. So I don’t know. Perhaps it was the Keeper telling me what was expected of me. Perhaps not. Now that my crisis is over, the voice of the Keeper within me is no more clear than it is for anyone else.”

  “I don’t really believe that,” said Shedemei.

  “Well it’s true,” said Akma. “The only difference is that now I’m trying to hear his voice, where before I was trying to hide from it.”

  “That’s all the difference in the world. And yes, I think you’re right, the Keeper wanted you to come today. We were warned that you were coming, and we made our own plans. A bit of pageantry. A visual image that we think the Keeper wants the world to see.”

  Akma felt the dread rise in him until it almost made him sick. “I don’t want to do anything . . . public. Yet.”

  “That’s because you remember how much harm you did in front of audiences, and how it harmed you.”

  He was stunned that she understood this about him, when he had only figured it out himself this morning.

  “What you haven’t realized yet,” she went on, “is that because your harm was public, undoing it will have to be public as well. You have a lot of speeches to give, using all your talents as a polemicist, only this time on the side of truth. It’s harder in some ways, you know—more rules. But easier, too, because you can speak more from the heart and less from the head. You don’t have to calculate the truth the same way you calculate a lie.”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  “Being right is my business,” she said. “That’s why I’m such a superb schoolmaster.” Then, to his surprise, she winked at him. “I’m joking, Akma. Hard to believe, but I have a sense of humor. I hope you haven’t lost yours.”

  “No,” he said. “No, I was just . . . I’m just . . . easily distracted these days.”

  Someone was coming down the corridor. He looked, and knew the man at once, though he was in shadow. “Bego,” he whispered. “Bego,” he said aloud. “Are you here? I didn’t know that you were here.”

  Bego sped up and, forgetting dignity, opened his wings and glided a little as he rushed to his former pupil. “Akma,” he said. “You don’t know how I’ve yearned to see you. Will you forgive me?”

  “For what, Bego?”

  “For using you, for misleading you, for trying to guide your thought without telling you—these were all crimes of the first order, Akma. I know you’re all caught up in what an awful fellow you are, so that mine look like petty faults to you, but you have to know. . . .”

  “I know,” said Akma. “All I remember of our time together is what a gift your wisdom and learning were to me, and how much strength I got from your confidence in me.” He held his teacher’s hands, the folds of Bego’s wings covering his fingers. “I was so afraid for you, for the punishment Motiak might give you.”

  Bego laughed. “I thought it was the end of the world. Do you know his punishment? He forbade me to read. I was barred from the library. Three spies stayed with me, awake in shifts, to see to it I didn’t so much as scratch my name in the dirt with a stick. No reading, no writing. I thought that I’d go mad. My life was in the books, you see. The only people that I valued were the rare others, like you, who were as much at home with reading as I am. And then to be cut off from it—it was madness, I lived as a lunatic, hardly sleeping, longing for death. And then one day it dawned on me. What are books, anyway? The words of men and women who had something to say. Only when you read the book, the only voice you hear in your head is your own. You have the advantage of permanence, of being able to reread the same words again and again; but that’s really a lie, because it gives you the impression that the writer thought and spoke permanently, when in fact the moment the book was written, the writer changed and became someone else, endlessly exciting because he was endlessly reinvented. To read a book is to live among the dead, to dance with stones. Why should I mourn for having lost the company of the dead, when the living were still here, their books yet unwritten, or rather they’re being written in every moment of their lives!”

  “So you came here.”

  “Came here! Came here and begged Shedemei to take me on, even though I was forbidden to read anything. She let me attend only one class. Voozhum’s class, because the old lady is so blind she. can’t assign readings anyway, she just talks and the students listen and then talk back. But she was a digger! Do you have any idea how hard that was for me? How humiliating? I laugh now to think of it—this woman is a treasure! She has written nothing and if I had continued to live in books I would never have heard her voice, but I’ll tell you, Akma, there is no moral philosopher in all the king’s library who is as subtle and . . . humane as she is.”

  Akma laughed and embraced the little man. In all the years they had spent as student and master, there had been no such embrace; the books were always between them. But now it felt right to have the brush of the man’s wings against his thighs as the long arms nearly double-wrapped him at the waist. “Bego, how glad I am that we both found our own route to healing.”

  Bego nodded, drew away from him. “Healing what can be healed. Undoing what can be undone. I couldn’t have repaired the damage I did to you—I could only hope that you and the Keeper would work it out between you. And my own life—I’ve come too late to the things I’ve learned. I’ve never had a wife, never taken part in the great passage of blossom, seed, and sapling. Now I’m just an old stump and there’s no more bloom in me. But that doesn’t mean I’m sad or sorry for myself, don’t misunderstand me, boy! I’m happier than I’ve ever been.”

  “Surely now the king will release you from your punishment.”

  “I haven’t asked. I don’t need to. I know everything that the library can teach me anyway. I’m busy discovering that all these children aren’t just a single mass of annoyances, but instead are a whole bunch of individual, unique annoyances which are becoming increasingly interesting to me. Most of the books I read were written by men and to read them you’d think there was no such thing as a sentient female. Listening to the chatter of infantile females is opening a new world to me.”

  They laughed together. Only then, in the laughter, did Akma lift his gaze enough to see that they were no longer alone. Edhadeya stood there in the corridor, not five paces off, a look of uncertainty and shyness on her face. The moment she saw that he had noticed her, she looked down at the old digger woman whose hand she held. Then she stepped toward him, slowly, leading the halting old woman. “Akma,” said Edhadeya. “This is Voozhum. She was once my . . . slave. She’s also the greatest teacher in a school of great teachers.”

  The old woman looked at him through rheumy eyes; the lack of focus in her gaze told him that she was nearly blind. Withered and bent, she was still a digger, still had the massive haunches and the probing snout. In spite of himself, he saw for a fleeting moment the image of a giant digger, towering over him with a whip in his hand, laying on with the lash because he dared to rest a moment in the hot sunlight. He felt the sting across his back; and then, worse yet, saw the same lash come down on his mother’s back and he was powerless to stop it. Rage flashed through him.

  And then was gone. For now he saw that this old woman was not the same as the guard who had beaten him with such obvious pleasure in his cruelty and authority. How could he have ever hated all diggers for the
actions of a few? And now he knew that he had been no better than they were: When the path of his life gave him a bit of power and influence, what had he done with it, that differed in any important way from what they did, except that his crimes were on a larger scale and he did a better job of lying to himself about what he was doing? I have been a digger a thousand times over; I have seen their suffering with the knowledge that I caused it. I forgive the digger guards who mistreated us. I value even their miserable lives; the harm they did to us cost us only pain, while it cost them the love of the Keeper—a far more terrible price, even if they didn’t understand the reason for the emptiness and agony in their hearts.

  Akma knelt before the old woman, so her bent-over head and his were at the same level. She leaned close to him, her nose almost touching him; was the sniffing at him? No, merely trying to see his face. “This is the one I saw in my dream,” she said. “The Keeper thinks you’re worth a lot of trouble.”

  “Voozhum,” he said, “I harmed you and all your people. I told terrible lies about you. I stirred up hatred and fear, and your people hungered and hurt because of me.”

  “Oh, that wasn’t you,” said Voozhum. “That boy died. It seems to me that you spent all those years just trying to find a way to kill that boy, and finally you did, and now you’re a new man. Tall for a newborn and more eloquent than most. But the new Akma doesn’t hate me.”

  Impulsively he said the thought that had only just occurred to him. “I think I have never seen a woman so beautiful.”

  “Well, now, you must be looking over my shoulder at Edhadeya,” Voozhum said.

  “Edhadeya and I have years ahead of us to watch her become as beautiful as you,” said Akma. “I think she will, don’t you, Voozhum?”

  “Definitely. It’s the hump of my back that I think is especially fetching.” Voozhum cackled with laughter at her own jest.

  “Will you teach me how to undo my past life?” asked Akma.

  “No,” she said. “Not the whole thing. Only the bad bits.”