(He knows that Eiadh is attracted to you. He remembers that you were once attracted to her. He also knows that I have chosen you to lead. He's mad with jealousy. He hungers for your death. It consumes him so that even the act of making love to her is a kind of murder in his heart.)
Don't you realize that this is the most terrible thing of all? If there's anything I want in my life, it's for Elemak to love me and respect me. What did I do, to turn him away!
(You refused to let him own your will.)
Love and respect have nothing to do with controlling what other people do.
(To Elemak, if he doesn't control you, you either don't exist or you're his enemy. For many years you didn't exist. Then he noticed you, and you weren't as easy to manipulate or intimidate as Mebbekew, and so you became a rival.)
Is it really that simple?
(I glossed over the hard parts.)
His tent isn't bouncing. Does that mean he's coming out soon?
(He's getting dressed. He's thinking of you. So is Eiadh.)
At least she doesn't want to kill me.
(If she ever got what she's wishing for, it would end the same, with you dead.)
Don't tell Luet that Elemak is planning to kill me.
(I'll tell Luet everything, exactly as I tell you. I don't lie to the humans who serve my cause.)
You lie to us whenever you think it's necessary. And I don't want you to lie to her, anyway—I just don't want her to worry.
(I do want her to worry, since you refuse to. I think sometimes you want to die.)
You can relieve your mind on that score. I like being alive and intend to continue.
(I think sometimes you look forward to death, because you think that you deserve to die for having killed Gaballufix.)
Here he comes.
(Notice how he makes sure you smell his hands.)
Nafai didn't appreciate the Oversoul's calling attention to that—he might not have noticed, otherwise. But, truth to tell, that was unlikely, because Elemak made a point of putting both hands on his shoulders, and even of brushing his fingers across Nafai's cheek as he said, "So you did stay awake. Maybe you'll amount to something in the desert after all."
"You didn't leave me on watch all that long," Nafai answered.
The womanly smell was plain enough. It was vaguely disgusting that Elemak would use his intimacy with his own wife this way. It was as if she had become nothing to him. A tool. Not a wife at all, but just a thing that he owned.
But if the Oversoul was right, then that was how Elemak experienced love—as ownership.
"Did you see anything?" asked Elemak.
"Darkness," said Nafai. He did not tell Elemak about the bandits only a few hundred meters away. First, it would only make him furious that Nafai was getting information from the Oversoul. And second, it would humiliate him that he chose as his campsite a place where bandits could conceal themselves so close. He would probably insist on searching for them, which would mean battle and bloodshed, or waking everybody up and moving on, which would be pointless, since the Oversoul was having no trouble keeping this spineless group of cutpurses under control.
"If you ever looked up, you'd notice there are stars," said Elemak.
Elemak was baiting him, of course, and Nafai knew that he should just ignore him, but he was filled with anger already, knowing that Elemak was plotting to kill him and yet still pretended to be his brother, knowing that Elemak had just made love to his wife in order to try to make Nafai suffer from jealousy. So Nafai could not contain himself. He flung a hand upward. "And that one is Sol, the Sun. Barely visible, but you can always find it if you know where to look. That's where we're going."
"Are we?" asked Elemak.
"It's the only reason the Oversoul brought us out of Basilica," said Nafai.
"Maybe the Oversoul won't necessarily get his way," said Elemak. "He's just a computer, after all—you said so yourself."
Nafai almost answered again, some snide comment to the effect that if the Oversoul was "just" a computer then Elemak himself was "just" a hairless baboon. Six months ago Nafai would have said it, and Elemak would have thrown him against a wall or knocked him down with a blow. But Nafai had learned a little since then, and so he held his tongue.
Luet was waiting for him in the tent. She had probably been dozing—she had worked hard since they started laying camp, and unlike the lazy ones she would be up early again in the morning. But she greeted him wordlessly with open eyes and a smile that warmed him in spite of the chill that Elemak had put in his heart.
Nafai undressed quickly and gathered her to him under the blankets. "You're warm," he said.
"I think the technical term is hot," she answered.
"Elemak is planning to kill me," he whispered.
"I wish the Oversoul would just stop him," she whispered.
"I don't think it can. I think Elemak's will is too strong for the Oversoul to make him change his mind once he's set on doing something." He didn't tell her that the Oversoul had hinted that somewhere along the line Nafai might have to kill his brother. Since Nafai had no intention of ever doing it, there was no reason to put the idea in Luet's mind. He would be ashamed to say it anyway, for fear she would then think he might consider such a thing.
"Hushidh thinks she senses Elemak bonding more closely with the ones who want to turn back—Kokor and Sevet, Vas and Obring, Meb and Dol. They're forming a sort of community now, and separating almost completely from the rest of us."
"Shedemei?"
"She wants to turn back, but there's no bond between her and the others."
"So only you and I and Hushidh and Mother want to go on into the desert."
"And Eiadh. She wants to go wherever you go."
They both laughed, but Nafai understood that Luet needed reassurance that Eiadh's desire for him was not reciprocated. So he reassured her thoroughly, and then they slept.
In the morning, with the camels packed, Elemak called them together. "A couple of things," he said. "First, Rasa and Shedemei have proposed it and I agree with them completely. While we're living in the desert, we can't afford to have the kind of sexual freedom we had in Basilica. It would only cause rancor and disloyalty, and that's a death sentence for a caravan. So as long as we remain in the desert—and that includes at Father's camp, and anywhere else that our population consists of just us and the three who are waiting for us—this is the law: There'll be no sleeping with anyone except your own husband or wife, and all marriages as they presently stand are permanent."
Immediately there was a gasp of shock from several; Luet looked around and saw that it was the predictable ones—Kokor and Obring and Mebbekew—who were most upset.
"You have no right to make a decision like that," said Vas mildly. "We're all Basilicans, and we live under Basilican law."
"When we're in Basilica we live under Basilican law," said Elemak. "But when you're in the desert you live under desert law, and desert law has it that the word of the caravan leader is final. I'll listen to any ideas until I have to make a decision, but once the decision is made any resistance is mutiny, do you understand me?"
"No one tells me who I must sleep with and who I may not" said Kokor.
Elemak walked up to her and faced her; she looked so frail compared to the sheer mass of Elemak's tall, well-muscled body. "And I tell you that in the desert, I won't have anyone creeping from tent to tent. It will lead to murder one way or another, and so instead of letting you improvise the dying, I'll let you know right now: If anyone is caught in a position that even looks like you're getting sexually involved with someone you aren't married to, I will personally kill the woman on the spot."
"The woman!" cried Kokor.
"We need the men to help load the camels," said Elemak. "Besides, the idea shouldn't seem strange to you, Koya, since you made exactly the same decision the last time you decided that somebody should die for the crime of adultery."
Luet could see how both Kokor and her
sister Sevet immediately touched their throats—for it was in the throat that Kokor had struck Sevet, nearly killing her and leaving her almost voiceless ever since. While Kokor's husband, Obring, who had been bouncing away just as merrily when Kokor found the two of them, was unscathed. It was viciously unkind and exactly appropriate for Elemak to remind them all of that event, because it completely silenced any kind of opposition to the new law from three of the four people most likely to oppose it: Kokor, Sevet, and Obring had nothing to say at all.
"You don't have the right to decide this," said Mebbekew. He was, of course, the fourth—but Luet knew that Elemak would have no trouble bringing him into line. He never did, with Meb.
"I not only have the right," said Elemak, "I have the duty.
This is a law necessary for the survival of our little company in the desert, and so it will be obeyed or I will enforce the only penalty that I cam enforce here, so many kilometers from civilization. If you can't grasp this idea, then I'm sure Lady Rasa can explain it to you."
He turned and faced Rasa, in a silent demand that she back him up. She did not disappoint him. "I tried and tried all night to think of another way to handle this," she said, "but we can't live without this law, and as Elya says, in the desert the only penalty that means anything at all is ... what he said. But not killing outright!" she said, clearly hating the whole idea of it. "Only binding and leaving a person."
"Only?" said Elemak disdainfully. "It's by far the crueler death."
"It leaves her in the hands of the Oversoul," Rasa said. "Perhaps to be rescued."
"You should pray not," said Elemak. "The animals are kinder than any rescuers she'd find out here."
"A lawbreaker is to be bound and abandoned, not killed!" Rasa insisted.
Luet thought: She fears it will be a daughter of hers who will first break this law. As for Elemak's rule that having only the woman die will better restrain the man, he has it backward. Few men think of consequences when they're filled with desire, but a woman can put off her own desires if a man she loves would be at risk.
"As the lady wishes," said Elemak. "The law of the desert leaves the choice up to the leader of the caravan. I would normally choose a quick, clean death by pulse, but let us hope that no such choice ever has to be made." He looked around at the whole group, turning to include in his gaze the ones who were behind him. "I don't ask for your consent in this," he said. "I simply tell you that this is the way it will be. So now raise your hand if you understand the law we will live by."
They all raised their hands, though clearly some were furious.
No, not quite all. "Meb," said Elemak. "Raise your hand. You're embarrassing your dear wife Dol. She's no doubt beginning to wonder who is the woman here whose love you consider so desirable that you would cause an imperfectly virtuous lady's certain death by pursuing it."
Now Meb raised his hand.
"Good," said Elemak. "And now for the other matter. We have a decision to make," he said.
The sun had not yet risen, so it was still bitterly cold—especially for the ones who had done very little of the work of striking the tents and loading the camels. So it might have been just the cold that made Mebbekew's voice tremble when he said, "I thought you were making all the decisions now."
"I make all the decisions that have to do with keeping us alive and moving," said Elemak. "But I don't fancy myself some kind of tyrant. The decisions that don't have to do with survival belong to the whole group, not to me. We can't survive unless we all stay together, so I'll tolerate no divisions among us. At the same time, I don't recall a point where anybody actually decided where it was we were going."
"We're going back to Father and Issib," said Nafai immediately. "You know they're counting on us to return."
"They have plenty of water as long as they stay put. They need someone to go and fetch them sometime in the next few months—they've got years of supplies, for that matter," said Elemak. "So let's not turn this into a life and death matter unless we have to. If the majority wants to go on until we reach Volemak in the desert, fine. That's where we'll all go."
"We can't go back to Basilica," said Luet. "My father made that very clear." Her father, of course, was Moozh, the great general of the Gorayni, though she had not known that until a few days ago. But by reminding the others of this newfound family connection, she hoped to make her words carry more weight. She wasn't skilled at persuasion; she had always simply told the truth, and because the women of Basilica knew her to be the waterseer, her words were taken seriously. It was a new thing, talking to a group that included men. But she knew that asserting one's family status was one of the ways people got their way in Basilica, and so she tried it now.
"Yes," said Kokor, "your tender loving father who tried to marry his own daughter and then threw us all out of the city when he couldn't."
"That's not the way it happened," said Luet.
Hushidh touched Luet's hand to still her. "Don't try," Hushidh whispered softly. "Koya's better at it than you are."
No one else heard Hushidh's words, but when Luet fell silent they understood the effect of what she said, and Kokor smirked.
"Luet is right enough that we probably can't go back to Basilica," said Elemak, "at least not right away—I think that was the message we were meant to understand from the fact that he sent an escort of soldiers to make sure we got safely away from the city."
"I'm so tired of hearing how none of us can get back to Basilica," said Mebbekew, "when it's only those who embarrassed him in front of everybody." He was pointing at Hushidh and Luet and Nafai.
"Do shut up, Meb," said Elemak with genial contempt. "I don't want us to be standing here talking when the sun comes up. We're in exactly the kind of country that bandits like to hole up in, and if there are some hiding from the darkness in caves nearby, they're bound to come out by daylight."
Luet wondered if in fact Elemak had picked up some intimation of the bandits that the Oversoul had been controlling. Perhaps Elemak knew all along that such men were only brave in the sunlight, and hid at night. Besides, it was possible that Elemak was receiving the Oversoul's messages subliminally, not realizing where the thoughts and ideas were coming from. After all, Elemak was as much a result of the Oversoul's secret breeding program as any of the rest of them were, and he had received a dream not long ago. If only Elemak would simply admit that he could communicate with the Oversoul and follow her plans willingly—it would uncomplicate everything. As it was, she and Hushidh had been working on plans to try to thwart Elemak in whatever it was he was planning to do.
"Even though we really can't go back to Basilica immediately," Elemak went on, "that doesn't mean we have to go join Father at once. There are many other cities that would take in a caravan of strangers, if only because Shedemei has an extremely valuable cargo of embryos and seeds."
"They're not for sale," said Shedemei. Her voice was harsh enough, her answer abrupt enough, that everyone knew she had no intention of arguing about it.
"Not even to save our lives?" said Elemak sweetly. "But never mind—I don't propose selling them anyway. They're only valuable when they come along with the knowledge that Shedya has in her head. What matters is that they will let us in if they know that, far from being a band of penniless wanderers recently expelled from Basilica by General Moozh of the Gorayni, we are instead accompanying the famous geneticist Shedemei, who is moving her laboratory away from strife-torn Basilica to some peaceful city that will guarantee her a place to do her work without disturbance."
"Perfect," said Vas. "There's not a City of the Plain that would refuse us entry on those terms."
"They'd offer us money, in fact," said Obring.
"They'd offer me money, you mean," said Shedemei. But clearly she was flattered—she hadn't really thought of the fact that her presence would convey a certain amount of prestige on any city she settled in. Luet could see that Elemak's flattery was having its effect.
(He's going to put it to
a vote.) The Oversoul spoke in Luet's mind.
That much is obvious by now, said Luet. What is his plan?
(When Nafai opposes the decision to return to the city, it will be mutiny.)
Then he must not oppose.
(Then my work would be thwarted.)
Then control the vote.
(Whose vote should I change? Which of them would Elemak believe if he suddenly voted to go on?)
Then don't let the vote happen.
(I have no such influence with Elemak.)
Then tell Nafai not to oppose!
(He must oppose, or there will be no voyage to Earth.)
"No!" cried Luet.
Everyone looked at her. "No what?" asked Elemak.
"No vote," she said. "There will be no vote."
"Ah yes," said Elemak. "We have another freedom-lover here who realizes that she doesn't approve of democracy after all, when she thinks the vote will go against her."
"Who said anything about voting?" asked Dol, who was never terribly sharp about what was going on around her.
"I vote we go back to civilization," said Obring. "Otherwise we're slaves to marriage—and to Elemak, for that matter!"
"But I said nothing about putting things to a vote," said Elemak. "I said only that we must make a decision about where to go. A vote might be interesting, but I won't be bound by it. It's your counsel that I need, not your governance."
So they counseled him, eloquently—or tried to. But if anyone even began to advance an argument that someone else had already stated, Elemak would silence them at once. "I've already heard that. Anything new to add?" As a result, the discussion didn't last very long at all. Sooner than Luet would have thought possible, Elemak asked, "Anything else?" and no one answered.
He waited, looked around at them. The sun was coming over the tops of the distant mountains now, and his eyes and hair glowed with reflected light. This is his finest moment, thought Luet. This is what he has planned for—a whole community, including his father's wife, including his brother Nafai, including the waterseer and the raveler of Basilica, including his own bride, all waiting for the decision that will change their lives. Or end them.
THE SHIPS OF EARTH Page 4