The Memory of Earth (32 page)

Nor was that enough. They quick-marched him to the nearest gate, which happened to be the Back Gate—right
past his mother’s house—and threw him into the dirt in front of the guards.

“This one’s leaving the city!” shouted one of the soldiers.

“And never coming back!” cried another.

The guards, however, did not seem terribly impressed. “Are you a citizen?” asked one.

“Yes,” said Elemak, dusting himself off.

“Thumb please.” They presented the thumbscreen, and Elemak held his thumb over it. “Citizen Elemak son of Hosni by the Wetchik. It is an honor to serve you.” Whereupon the guards all stood at attention and saluted him.

It completely stunned him. Never, in all his passages into and out of the city of Basilica, had anyone done more than raise an eyebrow when the city computer reported his prestigious parentage. And now a salute!

Then Gaballufix’s soldiers jeered again, boasting about what they’d do to him if he ever returned, and Elemak understood. The official city guards were letting him and everyone else near the gate see that
they
were not part of Gaballufix’s little army. Furthermore, the very fact that the son of Wetchik was clearly the enemy of Gaballufix made city guards want to salute him. If Elemak could only figure out how to use this situation, he might very well be able to turn it to his advantage. What if I returned to the city as the deliverer, leading the guard and the militia in crushing Gabya and his hated army of costume clones. The city would then gladly give me all that Gabya is trying to win through trickery, intimidation, and murder. I’d have all the power Gaballufix ever imagined—and the city would love me for it.

It was a miserable day in the desert, even allowing for the fact that except for about an hour and a half at noon, the canyon was in deep shade, with a steady breeze funneling through it. No place is comfortable, thought Nafai, when you’re waiting for someone
else
to do a job you think of as your own. Worse than the heat, than the sweat dripping into his eyes, than the grit that got into his clothing and between his teeth, was the sick dread Nafai felt whenever he thought of
Elemak
being the one entrusted with the Oversoul’s errand.

Nafai knew that Elemak had rigged the casting of lots, of course. He wasn’t such a fool as to think Elemak would actually leave such a thing to chance. Even as he admired the deftness with which Elya handled it, Nafai was angry at him. Was he even
attempting
to get the Index? Or was he going into the city and meeting with Gaballufix in order to plan some further betrayal of
Father and of the city and, finally, of the Oversoul’s guardianship of humanity?

Would he even return?

Then, at last, in mid-afternoon, there came the clatter and rattle of stones tumbling, and Elemak clambered noisily down into their hiding place. His hands were empty, but his eyes were bright. We have been betrayed, thought Nafai.

“He said no, of course,” said Elemak. “This Index is more important than Father told us. Gaballufix doesn’t want to give it up—at least not for nothing.”

“For what, then?” asked Issib.

“He didn’t say. But he has a price. He made it clear that he’s willing to hear an offer. The trouble is—we have to go back to Father and get access to his finances.”

Nafai didn’t like this at all. How did they know what Elemak and Gaballufix had promised each other?

“All the way back, empty-handed,” said Mebbekew. “Tell you what, Elya.
You
go back, and the rest of us will wait here till you come back with the password to Father’s accounts.”

“Right,” said Issib. “I’m not going to spend the night out here in the desert, when I can go into the city and use my floats.”

“How stupid are you, really?” said Elemak. “Don’t you realize that things are different now? You can’t go wandering anonymously through the city anymore. Gabya’s troops are all over it. And Gaballufix is not Father’s friend. Therefore he’s not
our
friend, either.”

“He’s your brother,” said Mebbekew.

“He’s nobody’s brother,” said Elemak. “He’s got both the morals and the surface properties of slime. I know him better than any of you, and I can promise you that he’d just as soon kill any of us as look at us.”

Nafai was amazed to hear Elemak talking this way. “I thought you wanted him to lead Basilica.”

“I thought his plan was the best hope for Basilica in the coming wars,” said Elemak. “But I never thought Gaballufix was out to get anything except his own advantage. His soldiers are all over the city—wearing some kind of holographic costume that covers their whole bodies, so all his soldiers look absolutely identical.”

“Whole-body masks!” cried Mebbekew. “What a great idea!”

“It means,” said Elemak, “that even when somebody sees one of Gaballufix’s soldiers committing a crime—like kidnapping or killing a stray son of old Wetchik—no one can possibly identify the individual who did it.”

“Oh,” said Mebbekew.

“So,” said Nafai, “even if Father gives us access to his money, what then? What makes you think Gaballufix would sell it?”

Think, Nafai. Even a fourteen-year-old should be able to grasp
something
of the affairs of men. Gaballufix is paying hundreds and hundreds of soldiers. His fortune is large, but not large enough to keep that up forever, not without getting control of the tax money of Basilica to support them all. Father’s money could make a huge difference. At the moment, Gaballufix probably needs money more than he needs the prestige of possessing this Index, which hardly anybody has even heard of anymore.”

Swallowing Elemak’s condescension, Nafai realized that Elemak’s analysis was right. “The Index
is
for sale, then.”

“
Could
be,” said Elemak. “So we go back to Father and see whether the Index is worth spending money for, and how
much
money. Then he gives us access to his finances and we go back and bargain—”

“And I say
you
go home and let me take my chances in the city,” said Mebbekew.

“I want to get away from my chair tonight,” said Issib.

“When we come back,” said Elemak, “
then
you can get into the city.”

“Like this time? You make us wait again, just like this time, and we’ll never get in,” said Issib.

“Fine,” said Elemak. “I’ll go back alone and tell Father that you’ve abandoned him and his cause, just so you can go into the city and float around and get laid.”

“I’m not going in to get laid!” protested Issib.

“And I’m not going in to float,” said Mebbekew, grinning.

“Wait a minute,” said Nafai. “If we go back to Father and get permission, then what? It’ll be almost a week. Who knows how things might have changed by then? There could already be civil war in Basilica. Or by then Gaballufix might have arranged other financing, so that our money wouldn’t mean anything to him. The time to make an offer is
now
.”

Elemak looked at him in surprise. “Well, yes, of course, that’s true. But we don’t have access to Father’s money.”

In answer, Nafai looked at Issib.

Issib rolled his eyes. “I promised Father,” he said.

“You mean
you
have access to Father’s password?” said Mebbekew.

“He said that somebody else ought to know it, in case of an emergency,” said Issib. “How did
you
know about it, Nafai?”

“Come on,” said Nafai, “I’m not an idiot. In your research you were getting access to city library files that they’d never let a kid like you get into without specific adult authorization. I didn’t know Father had
given
it to you, though.”

“Well,” said Issib, “he only gave me the entry code. I kind of figured out the back half myself.”

Mebbekew was livid. “All this time that I’ve been living like a beggar in the city,
you
had access to Father’s entire fortune?”

Think about it, Meb,” said Elemak. “Who else could Father
trust
with his password? Nafai’s a child, you’re a spendthrift, and I was constantly disagreeing with him about where we ought to invest our money. Issib, though—what was
he
going to do with the money?”

“So because he doesn’t
need
money, he gets all he wants?”

“If I had ever used his password to get money, he would have changed it and so of course I never used it,” said Issib. “Maybe he has still another password for getting into the money—I never tried. And I’m not trying now, either, so you can forget it. Father didn’t authorize us to go dipping into the family fortune.”

“He told us that the Oversoul wanted us to bring him the Index,” said Nafai. “Don’t you see? The Index is so important that Father had to send us back to face his enemy, a man who planned to kill him—”

“Oh, come on, Nyef, that was Father’s
dream
, not anything real,” said Mebbekew. “Gaballufix wasn’t planning to kill Father.”

“Yes he was,” said Elemak. “He was planning to kill Roptat
and
Father, and then put the blame on me.”

Mebbekew’s jaw hung open.

“He was going to arrange to have them find my pulse—the one I lent to
you,
Mebbekew—near Father’s body. Clumsy of you to lose my pulse, Meb.”

“How do you know all this?” asked Issib.

“Gaballufix told me,” said Elemak. “While he was trying to impress me with my helplessness.”

“Let’s go to the council,” said Issib. “If Gaballufix confessed—”

“He confessed—or rather
bragged
—to
me,
in a room alone. My word against his. There’s no point in telling anybody. It wouldn’t do any good.”

“This is the opportunity,” said Nafai. “Today, right now. We go down to the house, access Father’s files through his own library, convert all the funds into liquid assets. We go to the gold market and pick it up as metal bars and negotiable bonds and jewels and what-not, and then we go to Gaballufix and—”

“And he steals it all from us and kills us and leaves the chopped-up bits of our bodies for the jackals to find in some ditch outside the city,” said Elemak.

“Not so,” said Nafai. “We take a witness with us—someone he won’t dare to touch.”

“Who?” said Issib.

“Rashgallivak,” said Nafai. “He isn’t just the steward of the house of Wetchik, you know. He’s Palwashantu, and has a great deal of trust and prestige. We bring him along, he watches everything, he witnesses the exchange of Father’s fortune for the Index, and we all walk out alive. Gaballufix might be able to kill
us,
because we’re in hiding and Father’s an exile, but he can’t touch Rash.”

“You mean all
four
of us go to Gaballufix?” asked Issib.

“Into the city?” asked Mebbekew.

“It’s not a bad plan,” said Elemak. “Risky, but you’re right about this being the time to act.”

“So let’s go down to the house,” said Nafai. “We can leave the animals here for the night, can’t we? Issib and I can go to Father’s library to do the funds transfer, while you and Meb find Rash and bring him there so we can go meet Gaballufix together.”

“Will Rash go along with it?” asked Issib. “I mean, what if Gaballufix decides to kill us all anyway?”

“Yes,” said Elemak. “He’s a man of perfect loyalty. He will never swerve from his duty to the house of Wetchik.”

It took only an hour or so. It was late afternoon when they walked into the Gold Market and began the final transactions. All of the funds that were not tied up in real property were all in spendable form in Issib’s bank file—actually, like all the brothers’ bank files, a mere subfile of Father’s all-inclusive account. If anyone doubted that Issib was authorized to spend so much, there was Rashgallivak, silently observing. Everyone knew that if Rash was there, it had to be legitimate.

The amount involved was the largest single purchase of portable assets in the recent history of the Gold Market. No one broker had anything like enough ingots or jewels or bonds to handle even a large fraction of the buy. For more than an hour, until the sun was behind the red wall and the Gold Market was in shadow, the brokers scrambled among themselves until at last the whole amount was laid out on a single table. The funds were transferred; a staggering amount was moved from one column to another in all the computer displays—for all the brokers were watching now, in awe. The ingots then were rolled up in three cloth packages and tied, the jewels were rolled in cloth and bagged, and the bonds were folded into leather binders. Then all the parcels were distributed among the four sons of Wetchik.

One of the brokers had already arranged for a half-dozen of the city guards to accompany them wherever they were going, but Elemak sent them away. “If the guards are with us, then every thief in Basilica will see and take note of where we’re going. Our lives will be worthless then,” said Elemak. “We’ll move swiftly and without guard, without notice.”

Again the brokers looked at Rashgallivak, who nodded his approval.

Half an hour through the streets of the city, nervously aware of everyone who glanced at them, and then at last they were at the doors of Gaballufix’s house. Nafai saw at once that both Elemak and Mebbekew were recognized here. So, too, was Rashgallivak—but Rash was widely known in the Palwashantu clan, so it would have been a surprise if he had
not
been recognized. Only Nafai and Issib had to be introduced as they stood before Gaballufix in the great salon of his—no, not
his
, but his
wife’s
house.