Earthfall

by Orson Scott Card

  "He's not healing himself," said Luet.

  Nafai heard her voice and felt a surge of anger against Elemak. Did he think she was so weak that her spirit would break because she saw her husband enduring pain? What was Elemak trying to gain, anyway? It was the Oversoul he had to persuade-or surrender to. Something had happened, though. An oath.

  "I've noticed that," said Elemak. "His wrists don't seem to get better, or his ankles. I can't figure out if that's because the cloak just isn't working right now, or because he's deliberately not healing himself in order to look more pitiful so I'll feel sorry for him and loosen his bonds so he can get free and kill me."

  The whistling sound. Another blow, this time on the back of his neck. Nafai gasped at the pain that shot up and down his spine; for a few moments he was numb from the neck down, and he thought, He's broken my neck.

 

  Why doesn't he just kill me?

 

  Well stop it. Let him kill me. Then he'll have his victory and there'll be peace and everybody will be bettor off.

 

  What, dead isn't defeated?

 

  Then if you have any decency, tell Volemak to say the magic words and end all this.

 

  I'm too tired to make sense of this. Go away and let me die.

 

  The one on my neck?

 

  Oh, yes. I can feel that.

 

  Don't do it.

 

  Don't heal me until he leaves the room. Give me that much dignity.

 

  It's between him and me. I don't want him to see how you intervene for me.

  It's between him and me, and it always has been. Just as it was between Moozh and me. Just as it's between you and me. And between Luet and me. And when we get to Earth, it will be between all of you and the Keeper.>

  This really hurts.

 

  I said not to.

 

  "Look," said Elemak. "His leg is straightening out. I guess we found out how much pain he could take, and now he's got his invisible friend to save him."

  "I'm looking," said Volemak coldly. "What I see is a coward, striking a bound man with a metal rod."

  Elemak's voice rose to a scream. "I'm the coward? I'm not the one with the cloak! I'm not the one who can get magically healed whenever I stub my toe! I'm not the one with the power to give people jolts of electricity whenever I want to bring them to heel!"

  "It's not the power you have that makes you a coward or a bully," said Volemak. "It's how you use it. Do you think that being bound like that keeps the cloak from having the same power it's always had? As badly as you're treating him, as badly as you're treating all of us, Nafai still chooses not to strike you dead where you stand."

  "Do it then, Nyef," said Elemak softly. "If you have the power to strike me dead, do it. You've killed before. A drunk lying unconscious in the street, I think it was. My older half-brother, I think it was. That's your specialty, killing people who can't fight back. But Father thinks I'm the bully. How can it be bullying, to break the bones of a man who can heal himself in moments? Look, I can break your skull and-"

  There was a scream of rage from a woman and the sound of scuffling. Then someone was slammed into a wall; a woman cried. Nafai tried to open his eyes. All he could see was the wall his face was pressed against. "Luet," he whispered.

  "Luet can't heal herself, can she?" said Elemak. "She should remember that before she tries to fight with me."

  "All you're doing," said Nafai, "is using up the oxygen that your children need to breathe."

  "You can end it at any time, Nyef," said Elemak. "All you have to do is die."

  "And then what?" asked Volemak. "You'll just start hating the next best man, and for the same reason. Because he's better than you. And when you kill him, you'll find still another better than you. It will go on and on forever, Elemak, because each act of bullying cruelty you commit makes you smaller and smaller until finally you'll have to kill every human being and every animal and even then you'll look at yourself with such contempt that you won't be able to bear it-"

  The rod smashed down right in Nafai's face. He felt it cave in all the bones erf'the front of his head, and then everything went black.

  A moment later? It could have been; it could have been hours or days. He was conscious again, and his face was not broken. Nafai wondered if he was alone.

  Wondered what had happened to Father and Mother. To Luet. To Elemak.

  Someone was in the room. Someone was breathing.

  "All better," said the voice. A whisper. Hard to identify. No, not hard. Elemak. "The Oversoul wins again."

  Then the lights went out again and the door closed and he was alone.

  Eiadh was singing softly to the little ones, Yista and Menya and Zhivya, when Protchnu came to her. She heard him come into the room, the door sliding open and then sliding dosed again behind him. She did not stop singing.

  When the light returns again Will I remember how to see? Will I recognize my mother's face? Will she know me?

  When the light returns again Then nothing will I fear; So I close my eyes and dream of day In darkness here.

  "Singing is a waste of oxygen," said Protchnu softly.

  "So is crying," Eiadh answered quietly. "Three children are not crying now because one person sang. If you came to stop my singing, go away. Report my crime to your father. Maybe he'll get angry enough to beat me. Maybe he'll let you help."

  Still she didn't turn to look at him. She heard him breathing a little more heavily. Raggedly, perhaps. But she was surprised that when he spoke again, his voice was high with barely contained weeping. "It's not my feult you turned against Father."

  She had been so stung by his repudiation of her in the library that she hadn't spoken to him since, and had avoided dunking of him, Protchnu, her eldest, saying such terrible things to his own mother. The boy had looked so savage at that moment, so much like Elemak, that she had felt as though she didn't know him. But she did know him, didn't she? He was only eight years old. It was wrong for him to have been torn between quarreling parents like this.

  "I didn't turn against your father," she said softly. "I turned against what he's doing."

  "Nafai cheated us."

  "The Oversoul did. And all the parents of those children did. Not just Nafai."

  Protchnu was silent. She thought maybe she had carried the point with him. But no, he was thinking of something else. "Do you love him?"

  "I love your father, yes. But when he lets anger rule him, he does bad things. I reject those bad things."

  "I didn't mean Father."

  It was plain that he expected her to know already. That he had the idea somehow that she loved another man.

  And, of course, she did. But it was a hopeless love and one that she had never, never shown to anyone.

  "Whom did you mean, then?"

  "Him."

  "Say the name, Proya. Names aren't m
agic. It won't poison you to put the name on your lips,"

  "Nafai."

  "Uncle Nafai," she corrected. "Have respect for your elders."

  "You love him."

  "I would hope that I have a decent love for all my brothers-in-law, as I hope you will also love all your uncles. It would be nice if your father had a decent love for all his brothers. But perhaps you don't sec it that way. Look at Mcnya, lying there asleep. He is the fourth son in our family. He stands in relation to you as Nafai stands to your father. Tell me, Proya, are you planning someday to tie up little Menya and break his bones with a rod?"

  Protchnu started to cry in earnest now. Relenting, Eiadh sat up and reached out for him, gathered him into her arms, pulling him down to sit beside her on the bed. "I'll never hurt Menya," he said. "I'll protect him and keep him safe."

  "I know you will, Proya, I know it. And it's not the same thing between your father and Nafai. The difference in their ages is much greater. Nafai and Elya didn't have the same mother. And Elemak had a brother even older."

  Protchnu's eyes opened wide. "I thought Father was the oldest."

  "He's the oldest son of your grandfather Volemak. Back in the days when he was the Wetchik, in the land of Basilica. But Elemak's mother had other sons before she married Volemak. And the oldest of those was named Gaballufix."

  "Does Father hate Uncle Nafai because he killed his brother Gaballufix?"

  "They hated each other before that. And Gaballufix was trying to kill Nafai and your father and Issib and Meb."

  "Why would he want to kill Issib?"

  Eiadh noted with amusement that Protchnu didn't wonder why someone would want to kill his uncle Meb. "He wanted to rule Basilica, and the sons of the Wetchik stood in his way. Your grandfather was a very rich and powerful man, back in the land of Basilica."

  "What does ‘rich' mean?"

  What have I done to you, my poor child, that you don't even know what the word means? All wealth and grace have gone from life, and since you have seen nothing but poverty, even the words for the beautiful life are lost to you. "It means that you have more money than...."

  But of course he didn't know what money meant, either.

  "It means you have a more beautiful house than other people. A larger house, and fine clothing, many changes of clothing. And you go to better schools, with wiser teachers, and you have better food to eat, and more of it. All you could want, and more."

  "But then you should share," said Protchnu. "You told me that if you have more than you need, you should share."

  "And you do share. But... you won't understand, Proya. That kind of life is lost to us forever. You'll never understand it."

  They were quiet for a few moments.

  "Mother," said Protchnu.

  "Yes?"

  "You don't hate me because I chose Father? In the library that day?"

  "Every mother knows there'll come a time when her sons will choose their father. It's a part of growing up. I never thought it would come to you so young, but that wasn't your fault."

  A pause. Then his voice was very small indeed. "But I don't choose him."

  "No, Protchnu, I didn't think you would ever really choose the bad things he's doing. You're not that kind of boy." In truth, though, Eiadh sometimes feared that he was that kind of boy. She had seen him playing, had seen him lording it over the other boys, teasing some of them cruelly, until they cried, and then laughing at them. It had frightened her, back on Harmony, to see her son be so unkind to those smaller than him. And yet she had also been proud of how he led the other boys in everything, how they all looked up to him, how even Aunt Rasa's Oykib stepped back and let Protchnu take the first place among the boys.

  Can it ever be one without the other? The leadership without the lack of compassion? The pride without the cruelty?

  "But of course you choose your father," said Eiadh. "The man you know he really is, the good, brave, strong man you love so much. That's the man you were choosing that day, I know it."

  She could feel how Protchnu's body moved within her embrace as he steeled himself to say the hard thing. "He's really unhappy without you," he said.

  "Did he send you to tell me that?"

  "I sent myself," said Protchnu.

  Or did the Oversoul send you? Eiadh wondered sometimes. Hadn't Luet said that they were all chosen by the Oversoul? That they were all unusually receptive to her promptings? Then why shouldn't one of her children have these extraordinary gifts, like the one that had popped up in Chveya, for instance?

  "So your father in unhappy without me. Let him release Nafai, restore peace to the ship, and he won't have to be without me anymore."

  "He can't stop," said Protchnu. "Not without help."

  He's only eight years old? And he can see this deeply? Perhaps the crisis has awakened some hidden power of empathy within him. The Oversoul knows that at his age I was utterly witljout understanding or compassion for anyone. I was a moral wasteland, caring only for who was prettiest and who sang the best and who would be famous someday and who was rich. If I had only grown out of that childishness earlier, I might have seen which of the brothers was the better man, back before I married Elemak, back when Nafai was gazing at me with the calf eyes of adolescent love. I made a terrible mistake then. I looked at Elemak and couldn't see him without thinking, he's the heir of the Wetchik, oldest son of one of the richest and most prestigious men of Basilica. What was Nafai?

  Of course, if I'd been truly wise, I'd have married neither of them and I'd still be in Basilica. Though if Volemak was right, Basilica has already been destroyed, the city demolished and its few survivors scattered to the wind.

  "And what sort of help does your father need?" asked Eiadh.

  "He needs a way to change his mind without admitting that he's wrong."

  "Don't we all," she murmured.

  "Mother, I can hardly breathe sometimes. I wake up in the morning feeling like somebody's pressing on my chest. I just can't breathe in deeply enough. Sometimes I get dizzy and fall down. And I'm doing better than most. We have to help Father."

  She knew that this was true. But she also knew that after that scene in the library, she didn't have the power to help him. Now, though, with Protchnu beside her, she could do it. Had this eight-year-old that much power?

  Eight years old, but he had seen. He had understood what was needed, and he had taken the responsibility for acting on that understanding. It filled her with hope, not just for the immediate future, but for a time far distant. She knew that the community would divide, at the death of Volemak if not sooner, and when it did, Elemak would be the ruler of one of the halves. He would be angry, embittered, filled with loathing and violence. But Elemak would not live forever. Someday his place as ruler would be filled by someone else, and the most likely man was this one sitting beside her on the bed, this eight-year-old. If he grew in wisdom over the years, instead of growing in rage as his father had done, then when he took his father's place as ruler of the people he would be like autumn rains on the cities of the plain, bringing relief after the dry fire of summer.

  For you, Protchnu, I will do what must be done. I will humble myself before Elemak, unworthy as he is, for your sake, so that you will have a future, so that someday you can fill the role that nature has suited you to.

  "At the next mealtime in the library," she said. "Come to me then, and with you beside me I'll do what must be done."

  Elemak was with them during the meal, of course. He always was, now, ever since Volemak had used his absence as an opportunity to give the oath. The meals were more sparsely attended these days. After watching Elemak beat Nafai, Volemak and Rasa had taken to their beds. The lack of oxygen was affecting them as badly as the youngest of the babies. They hadn't the strength to move, and those who tended to them-Dol and Sevet-reported that they kept slipping into and out of unconsciousness and were delirious much of the time. "They're dying," they whispered-but loudly enough that Elemak could surely hear them duri
ng meals. He showed no reaction.

  At the noon meal of the fourth day of the waking, Elemak was sitting alone, his food untouched, when Protchnu got up from the table and walked to his mother. Elemak watched him go, his face darkening. But it was clear to everyone there that Protchnu was not joining himself to his mother's cause. Rather he was fetching her, bringing her along. He might be only two-thirds her height, but he was in control. Slowly they approached the table where Elemak sat.

  "Mother has something to tell you," said Protchnu.

  Suddenly Eiadh burst into tears and dropped to her knees. "Elemak," she sobbed, "I am so ashamed. I turned against my husband."

  Elemak sighed. "It's not going to work, Eiadh. I know what a good actress you are. Like Dolya. You can turn the tears on and off like a faucet."

  She wept all the harder. "Why should you ever believe me or trust me again? I deserve whatever terrible things you want to say to me. But I am your true wife.

  Without you I'm nothing, I'd rather die than not be part of you and your life. Please forgive me, take me back."

  Everyone could see how Elemak struggled between belief and skepticism. It was not as if he had it in him to be subtle or clever. Everyone was getting logy and stupid from the lack of oxygen. They could remember that once they had good, quick judgment, but they couldn't remember what it even felt like. Elemak blinked slowly, looking at her.

  "I know who the strongest, best man is," she said. "Not one who relies on tricks and machines, on lies and deception. You're the honest one."

  His lip curled in contempt at her obvious flattery. Yet he was also affected by it. Someone understands. Even if she's just mouthing empty words, the words are being said.

  "But the liars have the upper hand. They're the ones who are holding our babies hostage, not you. Sometimes a man has to give in to evil in order to save his children."

  Most of those listening knew that they were hearing a distortion of the truth. And yet they wanted it to be believed, wanted Elemak at least to believe it, because if he did, it would provide him with a way to surrender and still be noble and heroic in his own eyes. Let this be the version of history that Elemak believes in, so that our history can go on beyond this hour.