Earthborn

ELEVEN - DEFEAT

Dudagu didn't want her husband to go. "I hate it when you're gone for so many days."

"I'm sorry, but no matter how ill you are right now, I'm still the king," said Motiak.

"That's right, so you have people to find out things and report to you and you don't have to go and see for yourself!"

"I'm king of the earth people of Darakemba as surely as I'm king of the sky and middle people. They need to see that I don't want them to leave."

"You issued that decree, didn't you? Forbidding people to organize boycotts of the diggers?"

"Oh, yes. I decreed, and immediately Akma and the royal boys went about declaring that in compliance with the law, they no longer advocated a boycott and urged people not to stop hiring diggers or buying goods made by diggers. Thus I can't arrest them while their boycott message is still being spread by their pretence of discontinuing it."

"I still think you should make them come home and stop letting them speak."

"It wouldn't change the fact that people know what they believe, what they want. Believe it or not, Dudagu, despite your high opinion of my powers, I'm helpless."

"Punish them if they boycott the diggers! Confiscate their property! Cut off a ringer!"

"And how would I prove that they're boycotting? All they have to say is, ‘I was never satisfied with his work and so I hire other people now. It has nothing to do with what species he belongs to-don't I have the freedom to decide whom to hire?' Sometimes it might even be true. Should I punish them then?"

Dudagu thought about this for a few moments. "Well, then, if the diggers are leaving, let them go! If they all leave, then the problem is solved."

Motiak looked at her in silence until she finally realized something was wrong and looked at him and saw the cold rage in his face.

She gasped. "Did I say something wrong?"

"When someone in my kingdom decides that some of my citizens are not welcome, and drives them out against my will, don't you dare to tell me that once they're all gone, the problem is solved. Every earth person who leaves Darakemba makes this nation that much more evil and I'm beginning to hate being their king."

"I don't like the sound of that," she said. "You wouldn't do anything stupid like abdicating, would you?"

"And put Aronha in charge years ahead of schedule? Watch as he re-establishes this Ancient Ways abomination as the official religion of the empire? I wouldn't give him the satisfaction. No, I'll be king until the last breath is dragged out of my body. I only hope that I have the strength never to hope that all my sons die before me."

Dudagu fairly flew off the bed, to stand before him in tiny, majestic rage. "Don't you ever say such a monstrous thing again! Three of them aren't my sons, I know that, and I know they hate me and think I'm useless but they're still your sons, and that's still more sacred than anything else in the world, and no decent man would ever wish his sons to die before him even if he is the king and they are wretched traitorous snots like my Khimin turned out to be." She burst into tears.

He led her back to her bed. "Come on, I didn't mean it, I was just angry."

"So was I, only I was right to be angry.," she said, "That's true, you were, and I apologize. I didn't mean it."

"Please don't go."

"I will go, because it's the right thing to do. And you will stop pestering me about it, because I shouldn't have to feel guilty about doing my duty as king."

"I won't sleep while you're gone. You'll be lucky if I'm not dead of weakness and exhaustion when you return."

"Three days? Try to stay alive for three days."

"You don't take my sickness seriously at all, Tidaka," she said.

"I take it seriously," said Motiak, "but I never have and never will let it stop me from doing my duty. It's one of the tragedies of royal life, Dudagu. If you died while I was away, doing my duty, I would grieve. But if I failed in my duty because you were dying, I would be ashamed. For my kingdom's sake, I would rather have my people grieve with me than have my people ashamed of me."

"You have no heart," she said.

"No, I have a heart," said Motiak. "I just can't always do what it tells me to do."

"I'll hate you forever. I'll never forgive you."

"But I'll love jyow," he answered mildly. And then, when the door was closed behind him and she couldn't hear, he muttered, "I might even forgive you for making my home life so ... unrestful."

He left his house in the company of two captains-as tradition required, one was an angel, the other a human. Outside, spies and soldiers were ready-only a dozen spies and thirty soldiers, but it was best to be prepared. In these tumultuous times, one never knew when a party of Elemaki might penetrate deeply into Darakemba. And before the journey was done, they would be far upriver, much closer to the border.

On the way out of the city, they were joined by Akmaro, Chebeya, Edhadeya, and Shedemei. Motiak greeted his daughter with an embrace, and met Shedemei with short courtesy; it was easy to assume a level of intimacy as if he had long known her. "Someday you must tell me where you're from," he said. "Show me on a map, that is. I have the original maps that Nafai drew, showing the whole gornaya. I won't have heard of your city, but I can add it to the map."

"It would do no good," said Shedemei. "It doesn't exist now."

"A grief that can hardly be imagined," said Motiak.

"It was for a while," said Shedemei. "But I'm alive, and my work requires all my concentration."

"Still, I'd like to see where your city was. People often build again on the same site. If there was a reason to build a city there once, another people will think of the same reason again." Polite conversation; they all knew what was really on Motiak's mind. But there was no use talking about it all the time; it wasn't as if they could do much. And it was Motiak's duty to make sure they were as comfortable as he could make them. That was one of the chief annoyances of being king. No matter where he was, no matter who was with him, he was always host, always responsible for everyone else's well-being.

Out on the road, their reason for this journey was immediately apparent. The encampment of emigrating diggers wasn't large, but then it wasn't meant to be. Quiet humans and angels manned the booth where food and water were distributed; lidded jars with thongs to loop around the neck would serve to help the diggers on their way. They would also mark them as emigrants, so that any who saw them on the road would know they were leaving Darakemba. They had taken the invitation of the Ancients; they had decided to live where they were not hated. But it gave them no joy. Motiak hadn't spent that much of his life around earth people that he could easily read the expressions on their strange faces. But it took no great experience to see the dejection in the slope of their backs, the way they tended to walk now on two feet, now touching a hand to the ground, as if in being called animals they had begun somehow to discover it was true, so now it took all their remaining strength just to keep from setting down the other hand to make it a foot again, as it had been for an ancient ancestor scurrying through the alleys of a human city, looking for something edible or wet or shiny.

Motiak led his party onto the road; the diggers moved aside. "No," he said, "the road is wide enough. We can share it."

They stayed motionless at the verge, watching him.

"I am Motiak," he said. "Don't you understand that you are citizens? You don't have to go. I've opened up the public larders in every city. You can wait this out. It will pass."

Finally one of them spoke. "When we go there, we see the hatred in their eyes, sir. We know you meant well for us, setting us free. We don't hate you."

"It's not the hunger," said another. "You know it's not that."

"Yes it is," said a woman, holding three small children near her. "And the beatings. You won't live forever, sir."

"Whatever else might be true of my sons," said Motiak, "they will never permit the persecution."

"Oh, they'll starve us out, but not let us be hit?" the woman scoffed. "Stand up, you," she said to her children. "This is the king, here. This is majesty."

Motiak's angel captain made a motion as if to punish her for impudence, but Motiak waved him back with a tiny gesture. The irony in her voice could not overmatch the bitterness in his heart. She was right, to jeer at majesty. A king has no more power than the willing obedience of the great mass of the people gives him. A king who is worse than his people is a poisonous snake; a king who is better is last year's snakeskin, discarded in the grass.

Pabul was at the Ancient Ways booth. He had asked if he might come along, if only because he felt somewhat responsible for the troubles with his decision in Shedemei's trial the year before. "These so-called Ancients, they're a loathsome bunch," he said, "but they're not breaking any law. They don't foul the water or poison the food. It's fresh enough, and the rations they give the earth people are adequate for a day's journey." He hesitated, considering whether to say the next thing, then decided and spoke. "You could forbid the diggers to leave."

Motiak nodded. "Yes-I could require the most helpless and obedient of my citizens to stay and suffer further humiliation and abuse, from which I'm powerless to protect them, I could do that."

Pabul made no more argument along that line.

They walked all day, briskly because they were all healthy: They made a point of staying fit; Motiak and Pabul because their offices were fundamentally military ones and they might find themselves in the field at any time; Akmaro and Chebeya, Edhadeya and Shedemei because they were of the Kept and labored with their own hands, permitting themselves no excess of food or unproductive leisure. So they overtook group after group of diggers, and to each of them Motiak said the same thing. "Please stay. I wish you would stay. Trust in the Keeper to heal the wound in this land." And their answer was always the same: For you we would stay, Motiak, we know you wish us well; but there's no future here for me, for my children.

"It's misleading," Akmaro said that afternoon. "We see here the ones that are on the road. Most are staying."

"So far," said Motiak.

"Our resources are stretched to the limit, but all the diggers that the Kept can hire are earning wages; their children are still in school; there are even towns and villages where Akma and your sons have no influence and the people treat each other civilly, without boycotts or any sign of hate."

"How many such towns, Akmaro?" asked Motiak. "One in a hundred?"

"One in fifty," said Akmaro. "Or one in forty." Motiak had no need to answer that.

He thought back to the morning's conversation with his wife. The callousness with which she said to let the diggers go and then the problem would be solved. Is that any more monstrous than my cruel thought that I might wish to see my sons in graves before I die? Yet I would not have shrunk from letting them all take weapons in their hands and go out into battle, if an enemy attacked us. They might have died then, in the violence of war, and when they saw me mourning no man or woman in the kingdom would have said, If he really loved them he wouldn't have put them in the way of death.

He framed the idea in words and said them aloud, so Akmaro, still walking beside him, could hear. "There are things that parents must value even above their children's lives."

Akmaro needed no explanation to understand where Motiak's thoughts had turned. "That's hard," he said. "All of nature has written into our minds the idea that children matter more than anything."

"But civilization means rising above even that," said Motiak. "We feel our self to be the town, the tribe, the city, the nation-"

"The children of the Keeper-"

"Yes, we see that as the self that must be preserved at all costs, so that nearer things are less valuable. Does it mean we're monsters, that we hate our grown children if we send them off to war to kill and die so they can protect our neighbors' little ones?"

" ‘The survival of the family is best enhanced when the family is subsumed in a larger society,' " Akmaro recited. " ‘One family breaks and bleeds, but the larger organism heals. The wound is not fatal.'

Edhadeya has been teaching me the things that are taught in Rasaro's House."

"She spends more time in your house than mine," said Motiak.

"She finds more comfort from Chebeya than from her stepmother," said Akmaro. "I don't think that's surprising. Besides, she spends most of her time with Shedemei."

"Strange woman," said Motiak.

"When you know her better," said Akmaro, "you'll begin to realize that she's even stranger than you thought at first." Then, suddenly, Akmaro's demeanor changed; in a softer voice he said, "I didn't realize that your captain of soldiers was so close behind us."

"Is he?" asked Motiak.

"Were you overheard, do you think? When you said, ‘There are things that parents must value even above their children's lives'?"

Motiak glanced at Akmaro in alarm. They both understood that inadvertently, Motiak had placed their sons in great danger. "It's time that we stopped for our noon meal."

While the soldiers broke out the food that they were carrying, and all but two of the spies settled to the ground to eat, Motiak took Edhadeya aside. "I'm sorry to separate you from the group, but I have an urgent errand for you."

"And you can't send a spy?" she said.

"I most certainly cannot," he said. "I chanced to say something unfortunate just now, and I was overheard; but even if I hadn't been, the idea is bound to occur to one of my men, seeing how unhappy I am. You must go and find your brothers and warn them that it's possible, even likely, that some soldier, thinking to do me a great service, will attempt to relieve me of some of my family burdens."

"Oh, Father, you don't think they would raise a hand against the royal blood?"

"Kings' sons have died before," said Motiak. "My soldiers know that what my boys are doing now is killing me. I fear the loyalty of my most loyal men as much as I fear the disloyalty of my sons. Go to them, tell them my warning."

"Do you know what they'll say, Father? That you're threatening them, that you're trying to scare them into stopping their public speaking."

"I'm trying to save their lives. Tell them at least to keep their travel secret. Tell no one where they're going next, tell no one when they plan to leave. Go suddenly, arrive unexpectedly. They must, or somewhere on the road someone will be lying in wait for them. And not diggers-I'm talking about humans and angels. Will you do this?"

She nodded.

"I'll send two angels with you for safety, but when you get near, you must order them to stay behind so you can talk to your brothers alone."

She nodded; she got up to go.

"Edhadeya," said Motiak. "I know that I'm asking you to do a hard thing, to go and see them. But whom else can I send? Akmaro? Pabul? Akma will allow you to come close and speak to your brothers in privacy."

"I can bear it," said Edhadeya. "I can bear it better than watching these weary people leave their homeland."

As she walked away, Motiak saw that she was heading straight for Shedemei. He called out to her. She came back.

"I don't think you should talk about this to strangers," he said.

"I wasn't going to," she said, looking peeved. Again she left; again she headed straight for Shedemei, and this time spoke to her. Shedemei nodded, then shook her head no; only then did Edhadeya take her leave of the whole group, with two angels flying reconnaissance for her as she went.

Motiak was furious even though he knew his anger was foolish. Chebeya noticed at once that he was out of sorts and came to him. "What happened with Edhadeya?" she asked.

"I told her not to tell strangers what her errand was, and she went straight to this Shedemei."

Chebeya laughed ruefully. "Oh, Motiak, you should have been more specific than that. Shedemei isn't a stranger to anyone here but you."

"Edhadeya knew what I meant."

"No she didn't, Motiak. If she had known, she would have obeyed you. Not all your children are in revolt. Besides, Shedemei isn't Bego or ... Akma. She's only going to lead Edhadeya closer to the Keeper and to you."

"I want to talk to her, this Shedemei. It's time I got to know her."

A moment later Shedemei sat beside him in the shade, with Akmaro, Pabul, and Chebeya gathered round, the soldiers well back and out of earshot. "Enough of the evasions," said Motiak. "It was fine for you to be vague and mysterious until my daughter started confiding my secret errands to you."

"What secret errands?" said Shedemei.

"The reason I was sending her back to Darakemba."

"She told me nothing about that," said Shedemei.

"Are you going to pretend that you don't know what she's doing?"

"Not at all," said Shedemei. "I know exactly what she's doing. But she didn't tell me."

"Enough of the riddles! Who are you!"

"When I can see that it's any of your business to know, Motiak, I'll tell you. Until then, all you need to know is that I serve the Keeper as best I can, and so do you, and that makes us friends whether you like it or not."

No one had ever spoken to him with such impudence before. Only Chebeya's gentling touch on his elbow restrained him from embarrassing himself with words he would soon regret. "I try to be a decent man and not abuse my power as king, but I have my limits!"

"On the contrary," said Shedemei. "There is no limit to your decency. It is complete. Akma and your boys wouldn't have done half so well if that weren't true."

Motiak studied her face, still angry, still baffled. "I'm supposed to be the king, and nobody will tell me anything."

"If it's any help to you," said Shedemei, "I don't know anything that would help you, because it doesn't help me, either. I'm as eager as you are to put an end to this nonsense. I see as clearly as you do that if Akma succeeds in all that he plans to do, your kingdom will lie in ruins, your people scattered and enslaved, and this great experiment in freedom and harmony will be, not even a memory, but a legend and then a myth and then a fantasy."

"It's been a fantasy all along."

"No, that's not true," said Akmaro, leaping in to stop Motiak from wallowing in bitterness, as he so often had in recent weeks and months. "Don't start to use Akma's lies to excuse your own lack of understanding. You know that the Keeper of Earth is real. You know that the dreams he sends are true. You know that the future he showed to Binaro was a good one, full of hope and light, and you chose it, not out of fear of the Keeper, but out of love for his plan. Don't lose sight of that."

Motiak sighed. "It's nice at least that I don't have the burden of carrying a conscience around with me. Akmaro stores a much larger one than I could lift myself, and trots it out whenever it's needed." He laughed. So did they. For a moment, and then the laughter died in reflective silence. "My friends, I think we have seen how powerless I am. Even if I were like the late unlamented Nuab among the Zenifi, willing to kill whoever crossed me, he didn't have to face a determined enemy like Akma."

"Khideo's sword almost got him," Akmaro pointed out.

"Khideo didn't go around like Akma, telling the people exactly what the worst among them want to hear. Nuab didn't have his sons in unison against him so that the people would see them as the future and him as the past and ignore him as if he were already dead. Don't you think it's ironic, Akmaro, that what you did to that monster Pa-bulog, stealing his sons away from him, should end up happening to me?"

Akmaro laughed one bitter bark of a laugh. "You think I haven't seen the parallel? My son thinks he hates me, but his actions have been a perverse echo of mine. He even grew up to be the leader of a religious movement, and spends his life preaching and teaching. I should be proud."

"Yes, we're all such failures," said Chebeya nastily. "We can sit around here moaning about our helplessness. Shedemei, who supposedly knows all the secrets of the universe, can't think of a single useful thing to do. The king whines about how powerless kings are. My husband, the high priest, moans about what a failure he is as a father. While I have to sit here watching the threads that bind this kingdom together unraveling, watch the people forming themselves into tribes that are bound only by hate and fear, and all the while I know that those who have been trusted with all the power that there is in this land are doing nothing but feeling sorry for themselves!"

Her virulence startled them all.

"Yes," said Motiak, "so we're a helpless pathetic bunch. What exactly is your point?"

"You're angry at us because we can't do anything," said Akmaro.

"But that's the cause of our grief-we can't. You might as well be angry at the riverbank because it can't stop the water from flowing by."

"You foolish men of power!" cried Chebeya. "You're so used to governing with laws and words, soldiers and spies. Now you rage or have your feelings hurt because all your usual tools are useless. They were always useless. Everything always depended on the relationship between each individual person in this kingdom and the Keeper of Earth. Very few of them understand anything about the Keeper's plan, but they know goodness when they see it, and they know evil-they know what builds and what tears down, what brings happiness and what brings misery. Trust them!"

"Trust them?" said Motiak. "With Akma leading them to deny the most common decency?"

"Who are these people that Akma leads? You see them as crowds that flock to him and feel as though they had all betrayed you. But their reasons for following Akma are as individual as they are. Yes, some of them hate all diggers with an unreasoning passion-but they were always around, weren't they? I don't think their numbers have increased, not by one; in fact, after the persecutions I think there were fewer who really hated the diggers, because many people learned to feel compassion for them. Akma knows this-he knows that they don't want to be like the thugs who tormented children. So he tells them that the problem wasn't their fault, or even the diggers' fault, it's just the natural way of things, it can't be helped, we're all victims of the way nature works, it's all the will of the Keeper, we need to give in and move the diggers humanely out of sight so all this ugliness will go away. Most of the people who follow him are just trying to make the problem go away. If they simply let things happen, they think, peace will come again. But they're ashamed! I see it, why can't you? They know it's wrong. But it's inevitable, so why fight it? Even the king, even the high priest of the Kept can't do a thing about it!"

"That's right," growled Motiak. "We can't!"

"That's what Akma's saying to them."

"He's not saying it," said Motiak. "He's showing it."

"But they don't want it to be true. Oh, I'm not saying they're all decent people, or even most of them. There are plenty of them who are looking only for their own advantage. Better invest my time and wealth in making friends with Motiak's sons. But if they once thought that Akma would fail, they'd be right back with you, pretending to have been among the Kept all along, joking with you about how every family has problems with sons who are coming of age. They don't care whether the diggers come or go. In fact they miss the lower wages they were able to pay them. The people are not evil, Motiak. A large number of them are decent but they have no hope. Another large portion don't care that much about decency but they'd be just as happy to have the Kept in charge of things, they don't much care as long as they can prosper. And you know that the Kept are still a very large core of dedicated believers who love the Keeper's plan and are striving to save it at great cost to themselves, and with unflinching courage. These three groups, together, are the vast majority of your people. Not perfect, certainly, but good enough to be worth reigning over. Except that Akma's voice seems to be the only one that's heard." It was Shedemei who answered her tirade. "Yes, but that's not for our lack of trying. The king has pleaded, you and your husband have spoken publicly and constantly, Pabul here has searched the law for ways to help and his court has been firm on the side of decency-I've even done all that I could do, that would not be coercive."

"So it all comes down to Akma and my sons," said Motiak. "No," said Chebeya. "It all comes down to Akma. Those boys of yours would never be doing this either, Motiak, if it weren't for Akma."

"That was the meaning of the dream the Keeper sent me," said Akmaro. "It all comes down to Akma, and none of us has the slightest power to reach him. We've all tried-well, Pabul couldn't, because Akma would never let him come close. But the rest of us have tried, and we can't bend him, and as long as we can't stop Akma, we can't waken the decency of the people, so what does it matter?"

"You're not suggesting," said Motiak, "that I arrange the assassination of your own son?"

"No!" she cried. "See how you think of power as a matter of weapons, Motiak? And you, Akmaro, it's words, words, teaching, talking, that's what power means to you. But this problem is beyond what you can solve with your ordinary tools."

"What then?" said Shedemei. "What tools should'we use?"

"No tools at all!" cried Chebeya. "They don't work!"

Shedemei extended her open hands. "There I am," she said, "unarmed, my hands are empty. Fill them! Show me what to do and I'll do it! So will any of us!"

"I can't show you because I don't know. I can't give you tools because there are no tools. Don't you see? What Akma is wrecking- it's not our plan."

"If you're saying we should just leave it up to the Keeper," said Akmaro, "then what's the point of anything? Binaro said it-we're the Keeper's hands and mouths in this world."

"Yes, when the Keeper needs action or speech, we're the ones to do it. But that's not what's needed now!"

Akmaro reached out and took his wife's hands in his. "You're saying that we shouldn't just leave things up to the Keeper. You're saying we should demand that the Keeper either do something or show us what to do."

"The Keeper knows that," said Shedemei. "She hardly needs us to tell her what should be obvious."

"Maybe she needs us to admit that it's up to her. Maybe she needs us to say that whatever she decides, we will abide by it. Maybe it's time for Akma's father to say to the Keeper, Enough. Stop my son."

"Do you think I haven't begged the Keeper for answers?" Akmaro said, offended.

"Exactly," said Chebeya. "I've heard you, talking to the Keeper, saying, ‘Show me what to do. How can I save my son? How can I bring him back from these terrible things?' Doesn't it occur to you that the only reason the Keeper hasn't stopped Akma up to now is for your sake?"

"But I want him to stop."

"That's right!" cried Chebeya. "You want him to stop. That's what you plead for, over and over. I've seen the connection between you. Even though it's rage on his part and agonized frustration on yours, the ties of love between you are stronger than I've ever seen between any two people in my life. Think what that means-in all your pleas, you are really asking the Keeper to spare your son."

"Your son too," said Akmaro softly.

"I've shed the same tears as you, Kmadaro," she said. "I've said the same prayers to the Keeper. But it's time to utter a new prayer. It's time to say to the Keeper that we value her children more than we value ours. It's time for you to beg the Keeper of Earth to stop our son. To set the people of Darakemba free from his foul, foul influence."

Motiak couldn't see what her point was. "I just sent Edhadeya to try to warn my boys to be careful-are you saying I should have sent soldiers to assassinate Akma?"

"No," said Akmaro, answering for Chebeya so she wouldn't have to weep in frustration. "No, her point is that anything we might do at this point would be useless. If someone causes harm to any of these boys, they would be martyrs and you would be blamed forever. It's not in our power-that's what Chebeya's saying."

"But I thought she was telling you to... ."

"Akma has to be stopped, but the only way to stop him, that will actually work, is for everyone to see that he was stopped, not by any power of man or woman, of angel, human, or digger, but by the plain and naked power of the Keeper of Earth. She's saying that without realizing it, I've been begging, demanding that the Keeper find a way to save my son. All that's left now is for me to stop that prayer. I think... perhaps the Keeper has trusted me with his plan for this nation, and so he won't do anything without my consent. And without realizing it, up to now I've refused to let the Keeper do the only thing that would help at all. We've tried everything else, but now it's time for me to ask the Keeper to do now what was done long ago when Sherem threatened to undo all the teachings of Oykib."

"You want the Keeper to strike your son dead?" asked Pabul, incredulous.

"No I don't!" cried Akmaro. Chebeya burst into tears. "No I don't," Akmaro said softly. "I want my son to live. But more than that, I want the people of this world to live together as children of the Keeper. More than I want to spare the life of my son. It's time for me to beg the Keeper to do whatever he must do in order to save the people of Darakemba-no matter what it costs." His eyes, too, spilled over with tears. "It's happening again, just the way it did before, when I reached out to you, Pabul, you and your brothers, and taught you to love the Keeper and reject your father's ways. I knew that I had to do that, for the good of my people, for your good, even though I could see that it was tearing my boy apart, making him hate me. I knew I was losing him then. And now I have to consent to it all over again."

"Me, too?" asked Motiak in a small voice.

"No," said Shedemei. "Your boys will return to their senses once they're not with Akma anymore. And the peace of this kingdom depends on an orderly succession. Your boys must not die."

"But a father praying for the Keeper to strike his son dead... ." said Motiak.

"I will never pray for that," said Akmaro. "I'm not wise enough to tell the Keeper how to do his work. I'm only wise enough to listen to my wife and stop demanding that the Keeper leave my son alive."

"This is unbearable," murmured Pabul. "Father Akmaro, I wish I had died back in Chelem rather than bring this day upon you."

"No one brought this day upon me" said Akmaro. "Akma brought this day upon himself. The only hope of mercy for this people is for the Keeper to give justice to my son. So that's what I'm going to ask for." He rose from the ground, sighing deeply, terribly. "That's what I'm going to ask for with my whole heart. Justice for my son. I hope that he can bear to look the Keeper in the face."

They watched as Akmaro walked away from the clearing, into the trees lining the banks of the Tsidorek. "I don't know what to hope for," Motiak said.

"It's not our business to hope now," said Shedemei. "Akmaro and Chebeya finally found the courage to face what they had to face. Now I need to get back to the city and see whether I can do the same in my own small way."

They all knew better than to ask her what it was that she intended to do.

"I'll go with you," said Pabul.

"No," said Shedemei sharply. "Stay here. Akmaro will need you. Chebeya will need you. I don't need you." She was not to be disobeyed. She set off down the road, not even taking a waterjar with her.

"Will she be all right?" asked Motiak. "Should I have some of my spies keep an eye on her?"

"She'll be fine," said Chebeya. "I don't think she wants company. Or observers, either."

It was dark when the launch flew silently above the water of the Tsi-dorek and stopped to rest in the air a single step away from the riv-erbank. Shedemei took that step and entered the small craft-small compared to the Basilica., that is; huge compared to any other vehicle on Earth. Once she was secure inside, the launch took off without any command from her; the Oversoul knew what was needed, and took her to a garden she maintained in a hidden valley high above the settled land of Darakemba. As she traveled, the Oversoul spoke to her.

"That's right."

you.>

"I haven't had a true dream since I saw myself as a gardener in the sky. That came true long ago, and I don't expect to have another dream."

"Yes, well, I'd like to think the Keeper had something to say to me, of course. I'm as vain as the next person."

"It doesn't work that way. I'm not tired yet."

She left the launch and wandered in the cold night air in her garden, routinely noticing the growth of the plants, the relative preponderance of one species over another, the amount of brachiation, the size of the foliage. The Oversoul entered her observations into the ship's computer as notes. They had long since stopped commenting on the irony that a computer program designed to govern a world was now acting as scribe for a lone biologist.

The Oversoul began to talk to her. place that she could be. I've been searching for the means she uses to send dreams to the minds of humans, angels, and diggers. Whatever the Keeper does, I can't find it.>

"Didn't you notice that about four hundred years ago?"

"Forty million years you waited on Harmony, and now you're impatient?"

can speak so clearly, why do you think she's usually so vague ?>

"I understood why, during the dream," said Shedemei. "The experience is so overwhelming that if she gave it to most people, they'd be so consumed by it that they wouldn't own their souls anymore. Their will would be swallowed up in hers. It would kill them, in effect."

"I'm not. But since I had already chosen to follow the Keeper's plan, this dream didn't erase my will, it confirmed who I already was and what I already wanted. I didn't lose my freedom, and instead of killing me it made me more alive."

"Yes, that's right. It's an organic thing." She thought for a moment longer, and added, "She said she couldn't let me see her face, but now I understand that I don't need to or want to, because I've done something better."

"I've worn her face. I've seen through her eyes."

your face a thousand times before now, and used your hands and speech to do her work.>

Shedemei held up her hands and looked at them, damp and crumbed from the meal she was just finishing. "Then I would have to say that the Keeper of Earth looks just like me, don't you think?" She laughed for a moment; the sound was no doubt as raucous as any laugh, but inside herself it awakened the memory of music, and for a moment she remembered the taste of the fruit, and she was content.