Earthfall

by Orson Scott Card

  "It's funny to you?" asked Vas.

  "And sad, of course. Poor Sevet. Once I'm dead, she'll be back to having to make do with your clumsy occasional efforts at lovemaking."

  "I'll kill her, too," said Vas.

  "And then who? Everybody else, for instance? You're doomed, Vas. You should have been more clever. You should have bided your time."

  "I've already bided my time long enough."

  "You should have made it look like an accident. Or better yet, you could have made it look as though you tried to save my life. Take us one at a time, not all at once with an axe. And you have Obring's blood on your clothes. Very clumsy, Vas. They'll have to kill you for it, you know. Can't very well let a murderer run loose."

  "You'll be dead first," said Vas.

  "Oh, definitely. That'll make you feel much better as they-what, strangle you? Drown you? Maybe Shede-mei has some drug that will carry you off painlessly in your sleep. You can dream of me as you croak out your last breath."

  "I'm not afraid to die," said Vas.

  "That's too bad," said Elemak. "Because I am. Do you know why? I'm afraid there might be a life after death. I'm afraid I might have to go on living, only without this very comfortable body. What if I'm reincarnated? What if I come back with a body like... yours?"

  He said this last with as much loathing as he could muster. It had no effect.

  "I'm not going to let you goad me into taking an un-considered move," said Vas. "I know you're sitting there imagining ways to take the axe away from me before I can smash your head in with it. But why should I aim for your head? There are your legs, spread out like the limbs of a tree. I can chop through a five-centimeter branch with a single blow-think I can do as well with your ankle?"

  "No, I don't think you can," said Elemak.

  "You think you're quick enough to stop me? From a sitting position, you arrogant fool?"

  "I don't have to stop you," said Elemak.

  "Good thing," said Vas. "Because you can't."

  "But Meb can," said Elemak, "He's standing behind you with a very large mallet, and I think he's planning to drive your head down into your shoulders like a spike."

  Vas didn't even bother to turn around. "As long as you're conjuring up demons to frighten me with, why not have it be Nafai? He's the only real man around here anyway. I'm not afraid of Meb."

  "I quite agree with you," said Elemak. "Meb is only frightening when he's behind you with a mallet. Most of the time he's a worthless little digger turd. But Meb, it won't work. You can't drive his head down into his shoulders, not a soft little head like Vas's. It'll burst open like a melon first. Splash all over the room."

  "Don't fantasize about my head," said Vas. "It's your legs that are going to go." He raised the axe above his head.

  "If it's any consolation to you," said Elemak, "Meb's been sleeping with Sevet, too."

  Vas hesitated, not swinging the axe, not striking the blow, Elemak went on talking. "Your poor wife is apparently lonely enough to settle for anything that pretends to be male, even Meb, who isn't brave enough to smash you from behind after all. What's the mallet for, then, Meb? A cure for rectal itch?"

  Meb looked back at him with loathing. Elemak knew that he just hated being taunted and manipulated.

  "Oh, Meb," said Elemak. "Just swing the damn thing and have done."

  So he did. Meb turned out to have a much stronger swing than Elemak had expected. But Elemak was right about the splashing. It got really nasty, especially after Vas hit the floor and Meb kept right on pounding on his head with the mallet, three, four, five times, until the head was pulped and bits of brain and bone were spattered all over the room. Of course, as soon as Meb calmed down and could look at what he had done, he threw up, as if somehow Vas's head had exploded all by itself and not because he mashed it. But Elemak didn't much worry about Meb. It was Fusum who fascinated him, as he picked bits of Vas's brains off his naked body and ate them.

  "Don't get a taste for that, Fusum," Elemak said in digger language.

  "Not much different from peccary brains," said Fusum. "I already have a taste for those."

  "If you ever harm a human, Fusum, I'll cut you into tiny pieces."

  "Even Nafai?" asked Fusum, taunting him.

  So Fusum had picked up on the conflicts within the human community-even with Nafai up the canyon most of the time, trying to teach the skymeat how to farm.

  "Especially Nafai," said Elemak. "He's mine."

  Meb had stopped throwing up. "What were you saying? I heard you mention Nafai."

  "Oh, Fusum and I were just saying what a pity it was that the one useful act you will ever perform in your life was wasted on Vas."

  "Wasted?" asked Meb. "I killed my friend to save your life and you call it a waste?"

  "I would have stopped him before he touched me," said Elemak, He didn't know whether it was true, but he was fairly sure Meb would believe it. "And as for Vas being your friend-I'm not going to weep for you. Not with the smell of Sevet still on you from last night while he was on watch."

  "Shows what you know," said Meb, "Last night I didn't have time for Sevet. After all these months of pestering, I finally gave in and let Eiadh make love to-"

  Meb didn't finish his sentence. He found himself pressed against the wall with the axe handle strangling him.

  "I know it's a lie," said Elemak. "But if I ever thought that it was true, you'd end up praying for me to do for you what you did for Vas. A quick finish. It'd be too good for you, Meb."

  "I was joking, you ass," said Meb, when he could speak again.

  "Don't waste my time with your apologies," said Elemak, "Not when we have to explain Vas's death to the people I can hear coming up the ladderway right now."

  "What's to explain?" said Meb. "I saved your life."

  "Ah, but why was Vas trying to take it? And why did you so sweetly care?"

  "He was trying to kill you because you were humping his wife," said Meb. "And I cared enough to stop him because you're my older brother and I love you."

  "Is that your best performance, Meb?" asked Eiadh as she strode down the corridor toward them. "Lucky for you that we left Basilica before you could humiliate yourself by trying to act in public." Volemak, Oykib, and Padarok came to the door with her, all carrying tools that would have made pretty convincing weapons if they hadn't been in the hands of such gentle, peace-loving souls. "What's all this mess?" asked Eiadh. "Where's Vas?" Then she saw the body on the floor, the ruined head still crookedly connected to the shoulders. She recoiled. "What have you done?" she whispered to Elemak.

  "Actually, I did it," said Meb. "Just as he was about to take Elemak's ankle off."

  But Eiadh paid no attention to Meb. She looked Elemak coldly in the eye. "This man is dead because you couldn't live a month without getting same woman into bed."

  Elemak smiled at her. "Not true. As long as I've been married to you, my love, my bed has never had a woman in it."

  "You really are evil," said Eiadh. "You really do love destroying things. And not even great evil, not even that spectacular, world-wrecking kind of evil that epics are written about. No, what's in your heart is just a whiny little wormlike evil."

  "Say your worst," said Elemak. "I know you're really just glad I'm still alive."

  "The second most terrible thing I ever did in my life," said Eiadh, "was letting you be the father of my poor, innocent children."

  "And the worst thing?" said Elemak. "Go ahead and say it-I'm brave, I'm tough. I've got Vas's blood and brains all over me, I can take anything."

  Eiadh smiled at him, for she knew she was about to say the most terrible thing he could ever hear. "The worst thing I ever did was not to marry Nafai when I realized he was in love with me back in Rasa's house. I knew my mistake long before I actually married you, Elemak. I only went ahead and married you in order to stay close to Nafai. I prayed that all my sons would grow up to be Hke him, not you. And every time you made love to me, I always pretended it was hi
m. It was all I could do to keep from crying out his name."

  "Enough of this," said Volernak. "Terrible things have happened here today, and you're wasting our time with a domestic squabble."

  Elemak obediently dropped the discussion and submitted to Volemak's questioning. But he heard what Eiadh had said to him. He heard, and he would remember.

  It was Oykib who got the assignment of traveling up the canyon to tell about the killings. Shedemei could have used the ship's computers to tell Issib through the Index, but Volemak insisted that it had to be done in person. The first thought, then, was to send Chveya to tell her parents, but she was almost ready to be delivered of her firstborn child, and so her husband was chosen instead. He was not grateful. "I don't like leaving here right now," he said. "Not with violence in the air."

  "I think the killing is over," said Volemak.

  "And if you're wrong?"

  "Be practical," said Zdorab. "If Elemak did nothing when he had Obring and Vas to call upon, will he do anything now, when he has only Meb as a grown man to stand beside him? The killing is over."

  "The killing will never be over," interrupted Rasa, "if the adultery continues and goes unpunished."

  "I would say," said Volemak, "that the penalty for adultery has been clearly demonstrated."

  "I would say it hasn't," said Rasa. "I would say that your two oldest sons are adulterers by the words of their own mouths, and that my two daughters stand condemned by the same testimony."

  "What would you have me do?" asked Volemak. "Put them to death? Of the sixteen original adults of our expedition, shall we end with six of them dead?"

  "Which is worse, Volemak? Six dead now, and the law affirmed? Or two dead, and the law with them?"

  "You're a hard one, Mother," said Oykib. "The death penalty for adultery was a measure for the desert, not for here."

  "Because there are trees and streams, adultery is less fatal for our community?" asked Rasa. "I thought I raised you to reason better than that, Oykib."

  "Enough of this discussion," said Volemak. "Oykib must travel up the canyon to break the news."

  "I think he should take Eiadh with him," said Rasa.

  The others looked at her as if she were insane. "After what she said to Elemak?" asked Oykib. "Do you want to sign her death warrant?"

  "Do you think that leaving her down here is any better?" asked Rasa.

  "Yes," said Volemak. "For her to go up where Nafai is would be seen by Elemak as proof of some kind of liaison between them, when in fact there has never been any such thing. Rasa, are you determined to make things worse?"

  Rasa was furious, "I am determined to make things better five years from now, while you seem determined to make things better for the moment and let the future go hang." She stormed out of the library.

  Volemak sighed. "Every leader has his critics," he said. "Usually, though, they don't have to go home to them at night."

  "She was right in everything she said," said She-demei. "But you were also right in everything you decided."

  Volemak laughed grimly. "Sometimes, Shedya, there is no middle way."

  "I'm not taking a middle way. You were right that at this moment you can't decide any other way than the way you have decided. But she was right about the consequences. Sevet and Kokor will go on sleeping with Elemak and Mebbekew and, for all we know, every randy male digger who passes by their houses. Elemak and Mebbekew will go on betraying their wives and then hating the very women they're harming."

  "And what am I supposed to be able to do about that?" demanded Volemak.

  "Nothing," said Shedemei. "Nothing except watch our social order disintegrate."

  "Sometimes you're too much the scientist, Aunt Shedya," said Oykib.

  "Not possible," said Shedemei. "And you forget, my own children have to live in the new social order we've created here. When you think about it, this really marks the moment of Elemak's triumph over his father. Despite the oath, despite Elemak's many defeats, he has finally succeeded in undoing all his father's works. This is Elemak's type of society now, because the rest of us haven't the coldness of heart to uphold the law and put him to death."

  "That's right," said Volemak. "The rest of us haven't the coldness of heart. Do you?"

  "No," said Shedemei immediately. "As I said, your decisions are the only ones that can be made, disastrous as they are. Now let's let Oykib be on his way while the rest of you prepare the bodies for burning. As for me, I have a very messy room to clean up."

  Oykib stood up to leave. "I'll go up the mountain, but I don't like leaving Chveya at a time like this."

  "I'll be all right," Chveya murmured.

  "And what worries me has nothing to do with Elemak and Mebbekew and adultery and all that," said Oykib.

  "Oh, what's your concern, then?" asked Volemak. "I'm always happy to learn of something new to keep me awake at night."

  "Fusum saw Vas die."

  "We've never pretended to be immortal," Volemak said.

  Oykib shook his head. "Fusum saw Vas die. Someday we'll all agree that that was the worst thing about today's events."

  He went home long enough to pack up some hard-crusted bread for the journey. The way up the canyon was a path, now, and was becoming more of a road as they cut out underbrush and used picks and spades to smooth the roughest places. So it was only two hours to the saddle at the top of the canyon, and then another hour through the forest to the village.

  It had been transformed in the past few months, as Nafai and the others worked with the angels to teach them ways to make their lives better. Where the angels had known the location of every useful plant within twenty kilometers of their village, they now had felled enough trees to make a field where yams and manioc, melons and maize could thrive in open sunlight. Where the angels had kept herbivores from their protected plants and predators from their houses by building traps along every path and track at the perimeter of their territory, they now had a fence around their fields, and their turkeys and goats were corralled at night. Already the angels could grow food enough to feed twice their present population, and most of the surplus could be stored.

  But the agricultural revolution was not the only one. The angels seemed to want to emulate the humans in every way. Many of them now had built houses on the ground, the way the humans did, even though they hadn't the strength to build as sturdily and the first strong wind would tear the houses away. They knew this, too, and during bad weather continued to sleep hanging from branches in the trees. But it was important to them that they have a house in the human style, and Nafai had long since given up trying to persuade them of the uselessness of it.

  Oykib found Nyef and Hushidh working with the angel toolmakers.

  "What's wrong?" Hushidh said instantly. "Who is dead?"

  "How did you know?" asked Oykib.

  "Your face," she said. "Your fear to speak to us."

  "Is it Father?" asked Nafai, And that was the most pertinent question-when Volemak died, everything would change.

  "Not Father," said Oykib. "Vas killed Obring- vengeance for what happened between him and Sevet back in Basilica, apparently. And when he went to kill Elemak for more current betrayals, Meb was able to slip up behind him and kill him."

  "Elemak didn't do any killing?"

  "He might have, but he didn't get the chance," said Oykib. "Another thing. Fusum was watching when Mebbekew killed Vas. It happened right in front of him. With the mallet Meb had been using to stake out hides."

  "And how did Vas kill Obring?"

  "An axe to the chest and then through the throat," said Oykib. "Does it matter how?"

  "It matters what the diggers have learned about how to kill us," said Nafai.

  Oykib smiled grimly. "My own thoughts exactly."

  "That's not all you came to tell us, though, is it," said Hushidh.

  "No," said Oykib. And then he told them what Eiadh had said to Elemak, taunting him that she had been in love with Nafai all through her marriage
to Elemak, that she wanted her sons to grow up to be like Nafai.

  "Why didn't she save time and just slit my throat?" said Nafai.

  "And then her own," said Hushidh. "As far as Elemak is concerned, the two of you might as well have committed adultery. And no one hates other people's adultery like an adulterer."

  "Funny, isn't it," said Nafai, "how few years it took for us to change from the way it was at Basilica. Back there, Eiadh would simply not have renewed Elemak, and Sevet and Kokor would be on their sixth or tenth husbands since then, and nobody would have died for it,"

  "Do you think that it was more civilized?" asked Hushidh. "The same rages were just beneath the surface, the same hunger for loyalty from a husband or wife. Obring didn't die for something he did in the wild. He died for what he did back there in the city."

  "But it wasn't in the city that he died," said Nafai. "Never mind. If the diggers know that humans can be killed, we'd better make sure we tell the story to the angels as well. Fortunately I've never had to play god up here, so it'll come to them as less of a shock. We'll come down the mountain for the fimeral, of course. And we'll bring some angels with us. They need to see a human body going into the flames."

  "Maybe that's the wrong lesson to teach them," said Hushidh.

  "Why?" asked Nafai. "Do you think some angels are secretly wishing to slaughter all the humans?"

  "Not at all," said Hushidh. "But I think some angels are counting on us to keep the diggers from coming up against them and stealing their infants to eat them and make pedestals out of their bones. It won't encourage them to see that we can be broken and killed."

  "Especially not the way Vas died," said Oykib. Whereupon they insisted that he describe how it happened, and then clearly wished that he had not.

  "Just as well to have the angels know our weakness," said Nafai. "It's their own strength they have to trust in, that and the care and wisdom of the Keeper of Earth."