The Memory of Earth (29 page)

“You knew by the feel of it,” said Mebbekew.

“Don’t be a bad sport,” said Elemak. “If all goes well, maybe we can all go into the city. It all depends on how Gaballufix reacts, yes? And he’s my brother—if anyone can persuade him, I can.”

“I’m going inside no matter what,” said Issib. “I’ll wait
until you come back, but I’m not leaving here without going inside.”

“Issya,” said Elemak, “I can’t promise that I’ll let you go inside the walls of the city. But I
can
promise that before you leave here, you’ll get close enough that you can use the floats. All right?”

Sullenly Issib nodded.

“Your word, though, that no one leaves this spot until I come back.”

“What do we do if Gaballufix kills you?” asked Meb.

“He won’t.”

“What do we do,” Meb insisted, “if you don’t come back?”

“If I’m not back by dawn,” said Elemak, “then I’m either dead or incapacitated. At that point, my dear brother lets, I won’t be in charge anymore and so I don’t really care what you do. Go home, go back to Father, or go into the city and get laid or killed or lost, it will make not a speck of difference to me. But don’t worry—I’ll be back.”

That gave them plenty to think about as he led them down the arroyo into a clear area where no one was likely to find them. “But look,” said Elemak. “You can see the city walls from here. You can see High Gate.”

“Is that the gate you’ll be using?” asked Nafai.

“On the way in,” said Elemak. “On the way out, I’ll use any gate I can get to.”

With that he left them, striding boldly away, wishing that he felt half as bold as the show he was putting on for them.

Entering the city through High Gate was nowhere near as difficult as it would have been at Market Gate—after all, there was no Gold Market to protect. Still, Elemak had to have his thumb scanned to prove his citizenship,
and thus the city computer knew he had entered. Elemak had no doubt that even if Gabya’s house computer wasn’t tied directly to the city computers—which would be, of course, illegal—he certainly had informants in the city government, and if Gabya cared whether Elemak entered Basilica, he would know the information within moments.

Elemak was actually quite relieved not to be detained by the guard at the gate; it meant that Gaballufix had not put out his name for immediate arrest. Or else it meant that Gabya didn’t yet have quite as much power in the city as he boasted about to his friends and supporters. Maybe it was still beyond his reach to issue orders to the gate guards to detain his personal enemies.

Am I his enemy? thought Elemak. His brother, yes. His friend, no. An ally of convenience for a while, yes. We both saw ways to get benefit from a closer relationship. But now will he see me as an old business deal gone sour, as a possibly useful friend, or as a traitor to be punished?

Elemak meant to go straight to Gaballufix’s house, but once he was inside the city he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He jogged from High Funnel up Library Street, then took Temple to Wing. Either Temple or Wing would have carried him near to Gabya’s house, but by now Elemak was becoming more and more alarmed by the soldiers he was passing, or that were passing him. There were more of them, for one thing, than in the days before Father led them out into the desert, and even though he carefully avoided looking directly at them, he began to feel more and more uneasy about them. Finally, when he saw a group of a dozen turning onto Wing Street, he ducked into a doorway and then allowed himself to look at them directly as they passed.

Immediately he realized what was wrong. They were
all identical—the faces, the clothing, the weaponry, everything. “Impossible,” he whispered. There could not be so many identical people in the world at the same time. The ancient stories of cloning flashed through his mind—witches and wizards who tried to rule the world by creating genetically identical copies of themselves, which inevitably (in the stories, at least) turned on their creators and killed them. But this was the real world, and these were Gabya’s soldiers; he had no more notion how to clone than how to fly, and if he
could
make clones, he could certainly have chosen a better model than this nondescript, stupid-looking hulk that was going up and down the streets by dozens.

“It’s all fakery,” said a woman.

No one stood in the doorway with Elemak. Only when he stepped out did he see the speaker, an ageless, filthy wilder, naked except for the layers of grime and dust that covered her. Elemak was not one of those who saw wilders as objects of desire, though some of his friends used them as casually as if they were urinals for lust. He would have ignored her, except she seemed to be answering his whispered comment, and besides, whom could he speak to more safely than to an anonymous holy woman from the desert?

“How do they do it?” he asked. “Look all alike, I mean.”

“They say it’s an old theatre costume technique, much in vogue a thousand years ago.”

She didn’t talk like a desert woman. “How does it work?”

“It’s a fine netting, worn like a cloak. A control at the waist turns it on and off. It automatically adjusts itself to the surrounding light—it becomes very bright in sunlight, much more subtle in moonlight or shadow. A very clever device.”

Her voice sounded more and more refined the more she talked.

“Who are you?” he asked.

She looked into his face. “I am the Oversoul,” she said. “And who are you, Elemak? Are you my friend or my enemy?”

For a moment Elemak stood in terror. He had been so worried about Gaballufix, so fearful that a soldier would recognize him, call out his name, and carry him off or perhaps even kill him on the spot, that to now be recognized by a madwoman in the street left him completely empty-headed. How do you hide when even the street beggars know your name? Only when
she
moved, inserting her index finger into her navel and twiddling it around as if she were stirring some loathsome mixture there, did his disgust overcome his fear and send him out into the street, running blindly away from her.

Thus his plan of casual, unobtrusive movement through the streets was ruined. He did have enough presence of mind, however, not to go directly to Gabya’s house, not in
this
state of mind. Where else could he go, though? Habit would lead him to his mother’s house—old Hosni kept a fine old house in The Wells, near Back Gate, where she meddled in politics and made and broke reputations of rising young men and women of government. But desire triumphed over custom, and instead of taking refuge with his mother, he found himself on the porch of Rasa’s house.

He had studied here as a boy, of course, even before Father first mated with her; indeed, it was because his mother had placed him with Rasa that his father and his teacher first met. It had been vaguely embarrassing to have the other students gossip about the liaison between their mistress and Elya’s father, and from then on he had never been fully comfortable there until he gratefully left
off his schooling at the age of thirteen. Now, though, he came to Rasa’s house, not as a student, but as a suitor—and one whose suit had long been welcomed.

For a moment, hesitating at the door, Elemak realized that he was doing exactly what he had forbidden his young brothers to do—he was conducting personal business when he was supposed to be on Father’s errand. But whatever qualms he felt, he immediately dispelled them. His wooing of Eiadh was far more than pursuit of an advantageous match. Sometime in the last few months he had fallen in love with her; he desired her more than he had ever thought he could desire a woman. Her voice was music to him, her body an infinitely variable sculpture that astonished him with every movement. But as his devotion for her grew, he had become increasingly fearful that in her there was no matching increase of love for him. For all he knew, she still desired him only as the heir of the great Wetchik, who could provide her with enormous fortune and prestige. And if that was all she saw in him, all she felt for him, then recent events would turn her against him. There might be no advantage to her in marrying the Wetchik’s heir
now,
with so much of the business being closed down and sold off. How would she respond to him now?

He pulled the cord; the bell rang. It was an old-fashioned bell, a deepish gong rather than the musical chimes that were all the fashion now. To his surprise, it was none other than Rasa herself who answered the door.

“A man comes to my door,” she said. “A strong young man, with the dirt and sweat of the desert on his face. What am I to make of you? Are you bringing me word from my mate? Are you bringing more threats from Gaballufix? Are you here to carry off my niece Eiadh? Or have you come with fear in your heart, back to the house
of your childhood schooling, hoping for a bath and a meal and four stout walls to keep you safe?”

All was said with such humor that Elemak’s fear was dispelled. It felt good to have Rasa address him almost as an equal, and with genuine affection, too. “Father is well,” he answered, “I haven’t seen Gabya since I returned to the city, I hope to see Eiadh but have no plans for abduction at the moment, and as for the bath and the meal—I would accept such hospitality gratefully, but I would never have asked for it.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t have,” said Rasa. “You would have bounded in and expected Eiadh to be glad of your embrace when you smell like a camel and you spread dust with every step you take. Come in, Elemak.”

As he luxuriated in the bath he again felt some guilt, thinking of his brothers waiting for him in the rocks through the heat of the day—but then, bathing and cleansing himself before seeing Gaballufix was the most sensible of plans. It would make him look far less desperate and give the clear message that he had friends in the city—a much better bargaining position. Unless Gaballufix saw it as further proof that Elemak had played a double game against him. Never mind, never mind. His clothing, freshly washed and aired, was laid out for him in the secator, and he slipped it on gratefully when he arose from the bath, letting the secator dry him off as he dressed. He disdained the hair oils—keeping the hair oil-free was one of the ways the pro-Potokgavan party identified themselves, refusing to resemble the Wetheads in any way.

Eiadh met him in Rasa’s own salon. She seemed timid, but he took that as a good sign—at least she did not seem haughty or angry. Still, did he dare to take the liberties she had granted him at his last wooing? Or would that be too presumptuous now, seeing how his circumstances
had changed. He strode toward her, but instead of seating himself beside her on the couch, he sank to one knee before her and reached for her hand. She let him—and then reached out her other hand and touched his cheek. “Are we strangers now?” she asked. “Are you unwilling to sit beside me?”

She had understood his hesitation, and this was the reassurance that he needed. Immediately he sat beside her, kissed her, put his hand at her waist and felt how she breathed so passionately, how she yielded to him so eagerly. They said little at first, at least in words; in actions she told him that her feelings for him were undiminished.

“I thought you were gone forever,” she whispered, after long silence.

“Not from you,” he said. “But I don’t know what the future holds for me. The turmoil in the city, Father’s exile—”

“Some say that your brother was plotting to kill your father—”

“Never.”

“And others that your father was plotting to kill your brother—”

“Nonsense. Laughable. They’re both strong-minded men, that’s all.”

“That’s not
all
,” said Eiadh. “Your father never came here with soldiers, threatening that he could come in whenever he wanted the way Gaballufix did.”

“He came
here
?” said Elemak, angry. “For what?”

“He was Aunt Rasa’s mate once, remember—they have two daughters. . . .”

“Yes, I think I’ve met them.”

“Of course,” she said, laughing. “They’re your nieces, I know. And they’re Nyef’s and Issya’s sisters, too—aren’t families so complicated? But what I meant was, Gaballufix’s
coming wasn’t what was strange. It’s the
way
he came, with those soldiers in their horrible costumes so they all look so—inhuman.”

“I heard it was holography.”

“A very old theatrical device. Now that I’ve seen it, I’m glad that our actors use paint or, at the most, masks. Holographs are disturbing. Unnatural.” She put her hand inside his shirt, slid it along his skin. It tickled. He trembled. “You see?” she said. “How could a holograph ever feel like mat? How could anyone bear to be so
unreal
.”

“I imagine they’re still real enough under the holograph. And they can make faces at you without your knowing it.”

She laughed. “Imagine being an actor, though, with something like that. How would anyone ever know your facial expressions?”

“Maybe they only used them for non-speaking roles—so the same actors could play dozens of roles with instant costume changes.”

Eiadh’s eyes widened. “I didn’t know you were so knowledgeable about the theatre.”

“I once courted an actress,” said Elemak. He did it deliberately, knowing how it bothered most women to hear about old loves. “I thought she was beautiful then. You see, I had never seen
you.
Now I wonder if she was anything but a holograph.”

She kissed him as a reward for the pretty compliment.

Then the door opened and Rasa came in. She had allowed them the socially correct fifteen minutes—perhaps a little longer. “So nice of you to visit us, Elemak. Thank you, Eiadh, for conversing with our guest while I was detained.” It was the delicate pretense of courting, this custom of acting as if the suitor had come to call on the lady of the house, while the young woman being
wooed was merely helping the lady to entertain her guest.

“For all your hospitality, I am grateful beyond expression,” said Elemak. “You have rescued a weary traveler, my lady Rasa; I didn’t know how near death I must have been, until your kindness made me so alive.”

Rasa turned to Eiadh. “He’s really very good at this, isn’t he.”