The Memory of Earth

FIVE - WHEELS

Home certainly wasn't where Nafai wanted to be, not tonight. He had been hoping Father would be somewhere else, so Meb would have a chance to calm down before they talked. But no, of course not, Father wanted to talk to Meb. He had already spent an hour talking with Elemak-Nafai wasn't too broken up about missing that scene-and now he seemed to have the fantasy that he might possibly persuade Meb to believe in his vision.

The yelling started as soon as Mebbekew located Father in the study. Nafai had seen what these arguments were like, and so he quickly retreated to his room. On his way through the courtyard, he caught a glimpse of Issib peering out of his doorway. Another refugee, thought Nafai.

For the first hour or so, all that could be heard was the low murmur of Father's voice, presumably trying to explain about his vision, interrupted every few minutes by Mebbekew's clear, piercing shout making comments that ranged from accusation to derision. Then it finally came out, amid all of Mebbekew's complaints about how Father was humiliating the family, that Meb had been doing a fair job of bringing the family into disrepute by working as a masker. Then it was Father's turn to shout and Mebbekew's to try to explain, which was good for another hour of quarreling before Meb left the house in a rage and Father went out to the stables to tend to the animals until he calmed down.

Only then did Nafai venture to the kitchen, absolutely starving by now, for his first serious meal of the day. To his surprise, Elemak was there, sitting with Issib at the table.

"Elya, I didn't know you were here," said Nafai.

Elemak looked up at him, blankly, and then remembered. "Forget it," he said. "J was angry this morning but it's nothing, forget it."

Nafai had forgotten, with all that had happened since, that Elemak had warned him not to come home. "I guess I already did," he said.

Elemak gave him a disgusted look and then went back to his food.

"What did I say?"

"Never mind," said Issib. "We're trying to think what we should do."

Nafai headed for the freezer and started scanning the food that Truzhnisha had stocked there for occasions like this. He was dying of hunger and yet nothing looked good. "Is this all that's left?"

"No, I have the rest hidden in my pants," said Issib.

Nafai picked something that he remembered liking before, even though it didn't sound particularly good tonight. While it was heating he turned around and faced the others. "So, what have we decided?"

Elemak didn't look up.

"‘We haven't decided anything," said Issib.

"Oh, what, am I suddenly the only child in the house, while the men are making all the decisions?"

"Pretty much, yes," said Issib.

"And what decisions do you have to make? Who has any decisions to make at a //, besides Father? It's his house, his business, his money, and his name that's getting laughed at all through Basilica."

Elemak shook his head. "Not all through Basilica."

"You mean somebody hasn't heard about this yet?"

"I mean," said Elemak, "that not everybody is laughing."

"They will if that satire runs long. I saw a rehearsal. Meb was really pretty good. Of course he quit since it was about Father, but I think he really has talent. Did you know he sings?"

Elemak looked at him with contempt. "Are you really this shallow, Nyef?"

"Yes," said Nafai. "I'm so shallow that I actually think our embarrassment isn't all that important, if Father really saw a vision."

"We know Father saw it," said Elemak. "The problem is what he's doing about it."

"What, he gets a vision from the Oversold- warning about the destruction of the world, and he should keep it a secret?"

"Just eat your food," said Elemak.

"He's going around telling people that the Oversold wants us to go back to the old laws," said Issib.

"Which ones?"

"All of them."

"I mean which ones aren't we already following?"

Elemak apparently decided to go straight to the heart of things. "He went to the clan council and spoke against our decision to cooperate with Potokgavan in their war with the Wetheads."

"Who?"

"The Gorayni. The Wetheads."

They had got the nickname because of their habit of wearing their hair long, in ringlets, dripping with a perfumed oil. They were also known as vicious warriors with a habit of slaughtering prisoners who hadn't proved their valor by sustaining a serious wound before surrendering. "But they're hundreds of kilometers north of here," said Nafai, "and the Potoku are way to the southeast, and what do they have to fight about?"

"What do they teach you in your little school?" said Elemak. "The Potoku have extended their protection over all the coastal plain up to the Mochai River."

"Sure, right. Protection from what?"

"From the Gorayni, Nafai. We're between them. It's called geography."

"I know geography," said Nafai. "I just don't see why there should ever be a war between the Gorayni and the Potoku, and if there was, how they'd go about fighting it. I mean, Potokgavan has a fleet-all their homes are boats, for heaven's sake-but since Goraynivat has no seacoast-"

" Hadno seacoast. They've conquered Usluvat."

"I guess I knew that."

"Oh, I'm sure you did," said Elemak. "They have horsewagons. Have you heard of those?"

"Wheels," said Nafai. "Horses pulling men in boxes into battle."

"And carrying supplies to feed an army on a long march. A very long march. Horsewagons are changing everything." Suddenly Elemak sounded enthusiastic. It had been a lot of years since Nafai had seen Elya excited about anything. "I can envision a day when we'll widen the Ridge Road and the Plains Road and Market Street so that the farmers can haul their produce up here in horsewagons. The same number of horses can haul ten times as much. One man, two horses, and a wagon can bring what it takes a dozen men and twenty horses to haul up here now. The price of food drops. The cost of transporting our products downhill drops even lower- there's money there. I can envision roads going hundreds of kilometers, right across the desert-fewer animals in our caravans, less feed to haul and no need to find as much water on the journey. The world is getting smaller, and Father's trying to block it."

"AH this has something to do with his vision?"

"The old laws of the Oversold. Wheels for anything other than gears or toys are forbidden. Sacrilege. Abomination. Do you realize that horsewagons have been known about for thousands and thousands of years and nobody has ever built any?"

"Till now," said Issib.

"Maybe there was a good reason," said Nafai.

"The reason was superstition, that was the reason," said Elemak, "but now .we have a chance to build two hundred horsewagons with Potokgavan paying for it and providing us with the designs, and the price Gaballufix has negotiated is high enough that we can build two hundred more for ourselves."

"Why don't the Potoku build their own wagons?"

"They're coming here on boats," said Elemak. "Instead of building the wagons in Potokgavan and then floating them all the way, they'll simply send their soldiers and have the wagons waiting for them here."

"Why here ?"

"Because here is where they're going to draw the line. The Gorayni go no farther, or they face the wrath of the Potoku. Don't try to understand it, Nafai, it's men's business."

"It sounds to me like Father would be right to try to block this just on general principles," said Nafai. "I mean, if they find out we're building horsewagons for the Potoku, won't that just make the Gorayni send an army here to stop us?"

"They won't know until it's too late."

"Why won't they know? Is Basilica so good at keeping secrets?"

"Even if they know, Nyef, the Potoku will be here to stop them from trying to punish us."

"But if the Potoku weren't coming, and therefore we weren't making wagons for them, there'd be nothing for the Gorayni to punish us for ."

Elemak lowered his head to the table, making a show of his despair at trying to explain anything to Nafai.

"The world is changing," said Issib. "We're used to wars being local quarrels. But the Gorayni have changed it. They're conquering other countries that never did them any harm."

Elemak picked up the explanation. "Someday they'd reach us, with or without the Potoku here to protect us. Personally, I prefer letting the Potoku do the fighting."

"I can't believe all this has been going on and nobody's even talking about it in the city," said Nafai. "I really don't have my ears plugged with mud, and I haven't heard anything about us building wagons for Potokgavan."

Elemak shook his head. "It's a secret. Or it was, till Father brought it up before the entire clan council."

"You mean somebody was doing this and the clan council didn't even know?"

"It was a secret? said Elemak. "How many times do I have to say it?"

"So somebody was going to do this thing in the name of Basilica and the Palwashantu clan, and nobody in the clan council or the city council was going to be consulted about it?"

Issib laughed ruefully. "When you put it that way, it sounds pretty strange, doesn't it."

"It doesn't sound strange at all," said Elemak. "I can see that you're already with Roptat's party."

"Who's Roptat?"

Issib answered, "He's a Palwashantu, Elya's age is all, who's been using this war talk to build up his reputation as a prophet. Not like Father, he doesn't have visions from the Oversoul, he just writes prophecies that read like a shark tearing your leg off. And he keeps saying the same things that you just said."

"You mean this secret plan is so well known that there's already a party led by this Roptat trying to block it?"

"It wasn't that secret," said Ekmak. "There's no plot. There's no conspiracy. There's just some good people trying to do something that's in Basilica's vital interest, and some traitors doing everything they can to stop it."

Clearly Elemak had a one-sided view of things. Nafai had to offer another point of view. "Or maybe it's some greedy profiteers putting our city in a terribly dangerous situation so they can get rich, and some good people are trying to save the city by stopping them. I'm just suggesting this as a possibility."

Elemak was furious. "The people working on this project are already so rich that they hardly need any more money," he said. "And what I don't get is how a fourteen-year-old scholar who's never had to do a man's work in his life suddenly has opinions about political issues that he didn't even know existed until ten minutes ago."

"I was just asking a question," said Nafai. "I wasn't accusing you of anything."

"Well of course you weren't accusing me? said Elemak. "I'm not part of the project anyway."

"Of course not," said Nafai. "It's a secret project."

"I should have beaten the teeth out of your mouth this morning," said Elemak.

Why did it always come down to threats? "Do you beat the teeth out of the mouth of everybody who asks you questions you don't have any good answers for?"

"Never before," said Elemak, getting up. "But now I'm going to make up for all those missed opportunities."

"Stop it!" shouted Issib. "Don't we have enough problems?"

Elemak hesitated, then sat back down. "I shouldn't let him get to me."

Nafai breathed again. He hadn't noticed that he wasn't breathing.

"He's a child, what does he know?" said Elemak. "Father's the one who should know better. He's making a lot of people very angry. Some very dangerous people."

"You mean they're threatening him?" asked Nafai.

"Nobody threatens," said Elemak. "That would be crude. They're just... concerned about Father."

"But if everybody's laughing at Father, why should they care what he says? It sounds like it's this Roptat they ought to be worried about."

"It's the vision thing," said Elemak. "The Oversoul. Most men don't take it all that seriously, but the women... the city council... your mother isn't helping things."

"Or she is helping things, depending on which side you're on."

"Right," said Elemak. He got up from the table, but this time he wasn't threatening. "I can see which side you're on, Nyef, and I can only warn you that if Father has his way, we'll end up in Gorayni chains."

"Why are you so sure?" asked Nafai. "The Oversoul give you a vision or something?"

"I'm sure, my little half friend, because I understand things. When you grow up, you might actually come to know what that means. But I doubt it." Elemak walked out of the kitchen.

Issib sighed. "Does anybody actually like anybody else in this family?"

Nafai's food was overcooked, but he didn't care. He was trembling so violently that he could hardly carry his tray to the table.

"Why are you shaking?"

"I don't know," said Nafai. "Maybe I'm afraid."

"Of Elemak?"

"Why should I be afraid of him?" said Nafai. "Just because he could break my neck with his elbow."

"Then why do you keep provoking him?"

"Maybe I'm also afraid for him."

"Why?"

"Don't you think it's funny, Issib? Elya can sit here and talk about Father being in danger from powerful people-and yet his solution for it isn't to denounce those dangerous people, it's to try to get Father to stop talking."

"Nobody's being rational."

"I actually do understand politics," said Nafai. "I study history all the time. I left my class behind years ago. I know something about how wars start and who wins them. And this is the stupidest plan I've ever heard. Potokgavan has no chance of holding this area and no compelling reason to try. All that will happen is they'll send an army, provoke the Gorayni into attacking, and then they'll realize they can't win and go home to their floodplain where the Wetheads can't touch them, leaving us to bear the brunt of the Gorayni wrath. Building war wagons for them is so obviously going to lead to disaster that only a person completely blinded by greed could possibly support it. And if the Oversoul is telling Father to oppose the building of wagons, then the Oversoul is right."

"I'm sure the Oversoul is relieved to have your approval."

"Anything I can do to help."

"Nafai, you're fourteen."

"So?"

"Elemak doesn't want to hear that kind of thing from you."

"Neither do you, right?"

"I'm really tired. It's been a long day." Issib floated out of the kitchen.

Nafai finally started to eat. To his disgust he had no appetite, even though he knew he was still hungry. Must eat, can't eat. Forget it. He flushed the food down the drain and put the plate in the cleaning rack.

He walked out into the courtyard, heading for his room. The night air was chilly already-they were close enough to the desert to get sharp fells in temperature when the sun was down. He was still trembling. He didn't know why. It wasn't because of Father's vision of the destruction of the world, and it wasn't because of the war that would probably come to Basilica if they went ahead with the idiotic alliance with Potokgavan. Those were dangers, yes, but distant ones. And it wasn't because of Elemak's threats of violence, he'd lived with those all his life.

It wasn't until he was lying on his mat, still shaking even though his room was not cold, that he finally realized what was bothering him. Elemak had mentioned that Gaballufix was involved in negotiating the price with the Potoku. Obviously this whole plan had Gaballufix's support-who else but the clan chief would think he could commit the Palwashantu to such a dangerous course of action without even consulting the council? And so it was reasonable to suppose that when Elya warned about the dangerous enemies Father was making, it was Gaballufix he was referring to.

Gaballufix, whose house Elemak secretly visited today.

Where was Elemak's loyalty? With Father? Or with his half-brother Gaballufix? Clearly Elya was involved with this war wagon plan. What else was he involved with? The dangerous people weren't making threats, he had said. So what were they making-plans? Was Elya in on a plan to do something ugly to Father, and his hints were an attempt to warn Father away?

Just today, Mebbekew had spoken of metaphorical patricide.

No, thought Nafai. No, I'm simply upset because all of this has happened so suddenly, in one day. Father has a vision, and suddenly he's caught up in city politics in a way he never was before, almost as if the Oversoul sent him this vision specifically because of this stupid provocative project of Gaballufix's, because action needed to be taken now.

Why? What did the fate of Basilica matter to the Oversoul? Countless cities and nations had risen and fallen-dozens every century, thousands and thousands in all of human history. Maybe millions. The Oversoul hadn't lifted a finger. It wasn't war that the Oversoul cared about; it certainly wasn't preventing human suffering. So why was the Oversoul getting involved now? What was the urgency? Was it worth tearing their family apart? And even if maybe it was, who decided anyway? Nobody had asked the Oversoul for this, so if they really were getting bounced around as part of some master plan, it might be nice if the Oversoul let them in on what it had in mind.

Nafai lay on his mat, trembling.

Then he remembered. I wasn't going to sleep on a mat tonight. I was going to try to be a real man.

He almost laughed aloud. Sleeping on the bare floor- that would make me a man? What an idiot I am. What an ass.

Laughing at himself, now he could sleep.