The Memory of Earth (37 page)

Elemak pulled one of the rods out of a pack frame leaning against the canyon wall. It was designed to carry heavy loads on the back of a camel; it had some flex to it, and it wasn’t terribly heavy, but it was sturdy and long. Nafai knew at once what Elemak intended. “You have no right to touch me,” said Nafai.

“No, nobody has the right to touch you,” said Mebbekew. “Sacred Nafai, Father’s jewel-eyed boy, no one can touch him. He can touch
us,
of course. He can lose our inheritance for us, but no one can touch
him
.”

“It would never have been
your
inheritance, anyway,” Nafai said to Mebbekew. “It was always for Elemak.” Another thought came into Nafai’s mind, thinking of who would have received the inheritance. He knew before he said it that it wasn’t the wisest thing to say, when Elemak and Mebbekew were already in a fury. But he said it anyway. “When it comes to what you
lost
, you both deserved to be disinherited anyway, plotting against Father.”

“That is a lie,” said Mebbekew.

“How stupid do you think I am?” said Nafai. “You might not have known Gaballufix meant to kill Father
that morning, but you knew he meant to kill
somebody
. What did Gaballufix promise you, Elemak? The same thing he promised Rash—the Wetchik name and fortune, after Father was discredited and forced out of his place?”

Elemak roared and rushed at him, laying on with the rod. He was so angry that few of the blows actually landed true, but when they did, they were brutal. Nafai had never felt such pain, not even when he prayed, not even when his feet were in the scalding water of the lake. He ended up sprawled face-down in the gravel, with Elemak poised above him, ready to hit him—where, on his back? On his head?

“Please!” Nafai shouted.

“Liar!” roared Elemak.

“Traitor!” Nafai shouted back. He started to get to his knees, to his feet.

The rod fell, knocking him back down to the ground. He’s broken my back, thought Nafai. I’ll be paralyzed. I’ll be like Issib, crippled in a chair for the rest of my life.

It was as if the thought of Issib brought him into action. For as Elemak raised the rod again, Issib’s chair swung across in front of him. The chair was turning as it went—it couldn’t have been completely under control—and the rod caught Issib across one arm. He screamed in pain, and the chair lost control completely, spinning crazily and reeling back and forth. Its collision avoidance system kept it from banging into the stone walls of the arroyo, but it did bump into Mebbekew as he tried to run out of the way, knocking him down.

“Stay out of the way, Issib!” shouted Elemak.

“You coward!” cried Nafai. “You were
nothing
in front of Gaballufix, but now you can beat a cripple and a fourteen-year-old boy! Very brave!”

Again Elemak turned away from Issib to face Nafai. “You’ve said too much this time, boy,” he said. He wasn’t
shouting this time. It was a colder, deeper anger. “I’m never going to hear that voice again, do you understand me?”

“That’s right, Elya,” said Nafai. “You couldn’t get Gaballufix to kill Father for you, but at least you can kill
me
. Come ahead, prove what a man you are by killing your little brother.”

Nafai had been hoping to shame Elemak into backing off, but he miscalculated. Instead Elemak lost all self-control. As Issib spun by in front of him, Elemak seized an outflung arm and dragged Issib from the chair, throwing him to the ground like a broken toy.

“No!” screamed Nafai.

He rushed for Issib, to help him, but Mebbekew was between them, and when Nafai got near enough, Mebbekew shoved him to the ground. Nafai sprawled at Elemak’s feet.

Elemak had dropped his rod. As he reached for it, Mebbekew ran to the pack frame and drew out another one. “Let’s have done with him now. And if Issib can’t keep his mouth shut, both of them.”

Whether Elemak heard or not, Nafai couldn’t tell. He only knew that the rod came whistling down, smashing into his shoulder. Elemak’s aim still wasn’t good, but this much was clear: He was striking high on Nafai’s body. He was trying for the head. He meant Nafai to die.

Suddenly there was a blinding light in the canyon. Nafai lifted his head in time to see Elemak whirl around, trying to follow the source of the light. It was Issib’s chair.

Only it couldn’t be. Issib’s chair had a passive switching system. When it was not being told explicitly what to do, it settled down, leveled itself on its legs, and waited for instructions. It had done just that the moment Elemak dragged Issib to the ground.

“What’s happening?” asked Mebbekew.

“What’s happening?” said a mechanical voice from the chair.

“You must have broken it,” said Mebbekew.

“I am not the one who is broken,” said the chair. “Faith and trust are broken. Brotherhood is broken. Honor and law and decency are broken. Compassion is broken. But I am not broken.”

“Make it stop, Issya,” said Mebbekew.

Nafai noticed that Elemak said nothing. He was eyeing the chair steadily, the rod still in his hands. Then, with a grunt, Elemak rushed forward and swung at the chair with the rod.

Lightning flashed, or so it seemed. Elemak screamed and fell back, as the rod flew into the air. It was burning, the whole length of it.

Carefully, slowly, Mebbekew slid his own rod back down into the pack frame.

“Why were you beating your younger brother with a rod, Elemak?” said the chair. “Why did you plan his death, Mebbekew?”

“Who’s doing this?” Mebbekew said.

“Can’t you guess, fool?” Issib spoke feebly, from where he lay in the rocks. “Who sent us on this errand in the first place?”

“Father,” said Mebbekew.

“The Oversoul,” said Elemak.

“Don’t you understand yet, that because your younger brother Nafai was willing to hear my voice, I have chosen him to lead you?”

That silenced them both. But Nafai knew that in their hearts, their hatred of him had passed from hot anger to cold hard resentment that would never die. The Oversoul had chosen Nafai to lead them. Nafai, who couldn’t even get through negotiations with Gaballufix without messing
everything up. Oversoul, why are you doing this to me?

“If you had not betrayed your father, if you had believed in him and obeyed him, I would not have had to choose Nafai ahead of you,” said the chair—said the Oversoul. “Now go up into Basilica again, and I will deliver Gaballufix into your hands.”

With that, the chair’s lights dimmed, and it settled slowly to the ground.

They all waited, dumbly, for a few silent moments. Then Elemak turned to Issib and gently, carefully lifted him back and put him into the chair. “I’m sorry, Issya,” he said gendy. “I was not in my right mind. I would never hurt you for the world.”

Issib said nothing.

“It was Nafai we were angry at,” said Mebbekew.

Issib turned to him and, in a whisper, repeated Meb’s own words back to him. “Let’s have done with him now. And if Issib can’t keep his mouth shut, both of them.”

Mebbekew was stung. “So I guess you’re going to hold that against me forever.”

“Shut up, Meb,” said Elemak. “Let’s think.”

“Good idea,” said Mebbekew. “Thinking has done us
so
much good up to now.”

“It’s one thing to see the Oversoul move a chair around,” said Elemak. “But Gaballufix has hundreds of soldiers. He can kill each of us fifty times over—where are the soldiers of the Oversoul? What army is going to protect us now?”

Nafai was standing now, listening to them. He could hardly believe what he was hearing. “The Oversoul has just shown you some of its power, and you’re still afraid of Gaballufix’s soldiers? The Oversoul is stronger than these soldiers. If it doesn’t want them to kill us, the soldiers won’t kill us.”

Elemak and Mebbekew regarded him in silence.

“You were willing to kill me because you didn’t like my words,” said Nafai. “Are you willing to follow me now, in obeying the words of the Oversoul?”

“How do we know you didn’t rig the chair yourself?” said Mebbekew.

“That’s right,” said Nafai. “I knew before we ever went into the city today that you were going to blame me for everything and try to kill me, and so Issya and I rigged the chair to deliver exactly that speech.”

“Don’t be stupid, Meb,” said Elemak. “We’re going to get killed, but since we’ve lost everything else, it doesn’t really make that much difference to me.”

“Just because you’re a fatalist doesn’t mean
I
want to die,” said Mebbekew.

Issib swung his chair forward. “Let’s go,” he said to Nafai. “It’s the Oversoul I’m following, and you as his servant. Let’s go.”

Nafai nodded, then led the way up the canyon. For a while he heard only the sound of his own footfalls, and the faint whirring of Issib’s chair. Then, at last, came the clatter of Elemak and Mebbekew, following him up the arroyo.

If we are to have any hope at all, thought Nafai, we have to stop trying to come up with our own plans. Gaballufix outmaneuvers us every time.

And now there was even less hope, since Elemak and Mebbekew were deliberately being uncooperative. Why did the Oversoul have to say what it did about Nafai leading them? How could he possibly take command over his own older brothers, who would be far gladder to see him fail than to help him succeed? Issib would be no problem, of course, but it was hard to see how he would be much help, either, even wearing his floats again. He was too conspicuous, too fragile, and too slow, all at once.

Gradually, as they made their way through the desert—Nafai leading, not because he wanted to, but because Elemak refused to help him pick out a path—Nafai came to an inescapable conclusion: He would have a much better chance alone than with his brothers.

Not that he thought his chances were very good on his own. But he would have the Oversoul to help him. And the Oversoul
had
got him out of Basilica before.

But when the Oversoul got him out of Basilica, it was because Luet held his hand. Who would be his Luet now? She was the seer, as familiar with the Oversoul as Nafai was with his own mother. Luet could feel the Oversoul showing her every step; Nafai only felt the guidance of the Oversoul now and then, so rarely, so confusingly. What was his vision of a bloody-handed soldier walking the streets of Basilica? Was this an enemy he would have to fight? Was it his death? Or his guide? He was so confused, how could he possibly come up with a plan?

He stopped.

The others stopped behind him.

“What now?” asked Mebbekew. “Enlighten us, O great leader anointed by the Oversoul.”

Nafai didn’t answer. Instead he tried to empty his mind. To relax the knot of fear in his stomach. The Oversoul didn’t speak to him the way it spoke to Luet because Luet didn’t
expect
herself to come up with a plan. Luet listened. Listened
first,
understood
first.
If Nafai was serious about trying to help the Oversoul, trying to be its hands and feet here on the surface of this world, then he had to stop trying to make up his own foolish plans and give the Oversoul a chance to talk to him.

They were near Dogtown, which stretched along the roads leading out from the gate known as the Funnel. Till now, he had assumed that he should go around Dogtown and pick his way through some canyon back up to Forest Road and enter Basilica through Back Gate. Now, though, he waited, tested the ideas. He thought of going on, around Dogtown, and his thoughts drifted aimlessly.
Then he turned toward the Funnel, and at once felt a rash of confidence. Yes, he thought. The Oversoul is trying to lead me, if I’ll just shut up and listen. The way I should have shut up and listened while Elemak was bargaining with Gaballufix this afternoon.

“Oh, good,” said Mebbekew. “Let’s go up to the second most closely watched gate. Let’s go through the ugliest slum, where Gaballufix owns everybody that’s for sale, which is everybody that’s alive.”

“Hush,” said Issib.

“Let him talk,” said Nafai. “It’ll bring Gaballufix’s men down on us and get us all killed right now, which is exactly what Mebbekew wants, because as we all die Meb can say, ‘See, Nyef, you got us killed!’ which will let him die happy.”

Mebbekew started toward Nafai, but Elemak stopped him. “We’ll be quiet,” said Elemak.

Nafai led them on until they came to High Road, which ran from Gate Town to Dogtown. It was lined with houses much of the way, but at this time of night it wasn’t too safe, and few people would be abroad on it. Nafai led them to the widest gap between houses on both sides of the road, scanned to the left and right, and then ducked down and scurried across. Then he waited in a dry ditch on the far side of the road, watching for the others.

They didn’t come.

They didn’t come.

They’ve decided to abandon me now, thought Nafai. Well, fine.

Then they appeared. Not scurrying, as Nafai had done, but walking. All three of them. Of course, thought Nafai. They had waited to get Issib out of his chair. I should have thought of that.

As they walked across the road, Nafai realized that
instead of Issib floating, he was being helped by the other two, his arms flung across their shoulders, his feet being half-dragged. To anyone who didn’t know the truth, Issib would look like a drunk being helped home by his friends.