The Ships of Earth: Homecoming: Volume 3 (14 page)

Just as he was about to pull the trigger, he was startled by a sharp cracking sound only a meter from his head. His own shot went wild as he turned sharply to look at the place the sound had come from. A small plant growing from a crack in the rock a couple of meters above his head had been burnt to nothing, and smoke was rising from the spot. Since he had just seen the same thing happen to the shrub near the baboon, Meb recognized immediately what had happened. Someone was firing a pulse at
him
. Bandits had come—the camp was in danger, and he was going to die, off by himself, because the bandits had no choice but to kill him to keep him from giving the alarm. But I won’t give the alarm, he thought. Just let me live and I’ll hide here and be very quiet until it’s all over, just don’t kill me ...

“What were you doing, shooting at baboons!”

With a clatter of small stones, Nafai slid down the last slope to stand in on the stone where Meb was standing. Meb saw with some pleasure that Nafai had slipped down just as he had; but then realized that Nafai had somehow done it without losing control, and ended up on his feet instead of sitting on the stone.

Only then did Meb realize that it was Nafai who had shot at him, and missed him by only a couple of meters. “What were you trying to do, kill me?” demanded Meb. “You not
that
good a shot that you should be shooting so close to humans!”

“We don’t kill baboons,” said Nafai. “They’re like people—what are you thinking of!”

“Oh, since when do people sit around digging for grubs, looking for a chance to tup every woman with a red butt?”

“It pretty much describes your life, Meb,” said Nafai. “Did you think we were going to
eat
baboon meat?”

“I didn’t really care,” said Meb. “I wasn’t shooting for meat, I was going for the kill. You’re not the only one who can shoot, you know.”

With those words, it occurred to Meb that he and Nafai were alone now, with no one else watching, and Meb had a pulse. It could be an accident. I didn’t mean to touch the button. I was just shooting at a target and Nafai came down out of nowhere. I didn’t hear him, I was concentrating. Please, please forgive me, Father, I feel so terrible, my own brother, I deserve to die. Oh, you’re forgiven, my son. Just let me grieve for my youngest boy, who just got his balls shot off in a terrible hunting accident and bled to death. Why don’t you go get laid while I’m weeping here?

That’d be the day, Father actually wishing Mebbekew something he wanted!

“You don’t waste pulsefire on nothing shots,” said Nafai. “Elemak said so—they don’t last forever. And we don’t eat baboon. Elemak said that, too.”

“Elemak can fart into a flute and play it as a tune, it doesn’t mean
I
have to do it
his
way.” I have the pulse in my hand. Already sort of half-aimed at Nafai. I can show how I turned around, starded, and the pulse sort of fired and blew out Nafai’s chest. At this range, it might blow him up entirely, spattering little Nafai bits all over. I’ll come home with blood on my clothes no matter what.

Then he felt a pulse pressed against his head. “Hand me your pulse,” said Elemak.

“Why!” demanded Meb. “I wasn’t going to do it!”

Nafai piped up. “You already fired at the baboon once. If you were a better shot it would already be
done
.” So Nafai, of course, misunderstood completely what Meb had
meant that he wasn’t going to do. But Elemak understood.

“I said give me your pulse, handle first.”

Meb sighed dramatically and handed the pulse to Elemak. “Let’s make a big deal about it, shall we?
I’m
forbidden to shoot at a baboon, but
you
can point your pulse at the head of whichever brother you feel like pointing at, and it’s all
right
when you do it.”

Elemak clearly didn’t appreciate Meb’s reminder about the supposed execution of Nafai for mutiny in the desert. But Elemak merely left his pulse pressed to Meb’s temple as he spoke to Nafai. “Never let me see you aim your pulse at another human again,” said Elemak.

“I wasn’t aiming at him. I was aiming at the plant above his head and I hit it.”

“Yes, you’re a wonderful shot. But what if you sneeze? What if you stumble? It’s quite possible for you to take your own brother’s head off with one little slip. So you
never
aim at another person or anywhere near, do you understand me?”

“Yes,” said Nafai.

Oh, yes, yes, Big Brother Elemak, I’ll suck up to you just the way I’ve always sucked up to Papa. It made Meb want to puke.

“It
was
a good shot, though,” said Elemak.

“Thanks.”

“And Meb is lucky it was you who saw him, and not me, because I might have aimed for his foot and left him with a stump to help him remember that you don’t shoot baboons.”

This wasn’t right, Elemak attacking him like this in front of Nafai of all people. Oh, and of course, here come Vas and Obring, they
have
to be here to see Elemak showing him such disdain as to rag him in front of Nafai. “So suddenly baboons are the sacred animal?” asked Meb.

“You don’t kill them, you don’t eat them,” said Elemak.

“Why
not?
”

“Because they do no harm, and eating them would be like cannibalism.”

“I get it,” said Meb. “You’re one of those people who believe that boons are magical. They’ve got a pot of gold hidden away somewhere, every tribe of them, and if you’re really nice and feed them, then, after they’ve stripped your land bare of every edible thing and torn apart your house looking for more, they’ll rush off to their hiding place and bring the pot of gold to
you
.”

“More than one lost wanderer on the desert has been led to safety by baboons.”

“Right,” said Meb. “So that means we should let them all live forever? Let me tell you a secret, Elya. They’ll all die eventually, so why not now, for target practice? I’m not saying we have to
eat
it or anything.”

“And I’m saying you’re through hunting. Give me your pulse.”

“Oh, swell,” said Meb. “I’m supposed to be the only man without a pulse?”

“The pulses are for hunting. Nafai’s going to be a good hunter, and you’re not.”

“How do you know? It’s only the first day of serious work on it.”

“You’re not because you’re never going to have a pulse in your hands again as long as I live.”

It stung Mebbekew to the heart. Elemak was stripping away all his dignity, and for what? Because of a stupid baboon. How could Elya do this to him? And in front of Nafai, no less. “Oh, I get it,” said Meb. “This is how you show your
worship
for King Nafai.”

There was a moment’s pause in which Meb wondered if he might have goaded Elya just a speck too far and maybe this was the time Elemak was going to kill him or beat him to a pulp. Then Elemak spoke. “Head back to camp with the hare, Nafai,” he said. “Zdorab will want to get it into the coldbox until he starts the stew in the morning.”

“Yes,” said Nafai. Immediately he scampered down the hill to the valley floor.

“You can follow him,” Elemak said to Vas and Obring, who had just clattered down the slope, both of them landing on their butts.

Vas arose and dusted himself off. “Don’t do anything stupid, Elya,” said Vas. Then he turned and started down the nontrail that Nafai had used.

Since Meb figured these words from Vas were all the support he was going to get, he decided to make the most of it. “When you get back to camp, tell my father that the reason I’m dead is because Elya’s little accident with his pulse wasn’t an accident at all.”

“Yes, tell Father that,” said Elemak. “It’ll prove to him what he’s long suspected, that Meb is out of his dear little mind.”

“I’ll tell him nothing at all, for now—
unless
you two don’t get back to camp right away,” said Vas. “Come on, Obring.”

“I’m not your puppy,” said Obring.

“All right then, stay,” said Vas.

“Stay and do
what?
” asked Obring.

“If you have to ask, you’d better come with me,” said Vas. “We don’t want to interfere in this little family quarrel.”

Meb didn’t want them to go. He wanted witnesses to whatever it was Elya was planning to do. “Elemak’s just superstitious!” he called after them. “He believes those old stories about how if you kill a baboon, his whole troop comes and carries off your babies! Eiadh must be pregnant, that’s all! Come on back, we can all walk to camp together!”

But they didn’t come back.

“Listen, I’m sorry,” said Meb. “You don’t need to make such a fuss about it. It’s not as if I hit the boon or anything.”

Elemak leaned in close to him. “You’ll never take a pulse in your hands again.”

“Nafai was the one who shot at
me
,” said Meb. “You’ll take away my pulse for shooting at a boon, and Nafai shoots at
me
and he gets to
keep
his?”

“You don’t kill animals you don’t plan to eat. That’s a law of the desert, too. But you know why I’m taking your pulse, and it isn’t the baboon.”

“What, then?”

“Your fingers were itching,” said Elemak. “To kill Nafai.”

“Oh, you can read my mind now, is that it?”

“I can read your body, and Nafai’s no fool, either, he knows what you were planning. Don’t you realize that the second you started to move your pulse he would have blown your head off?”

“He doesn’t have the spine for it.”

“Maybe not,” said Elemak. “And maybe neither do you. But you aren’t going to get the chance.”

This was the stupidest thing Meb had ever heard. “A couple of days ago on the desert you tried to tie him up and leave him for the animals!”

“A couple of days ago I thought I could get us back to civilization,” said Elemak. “But that isn’t going to happen now. We’re stuck out here, together whether we like it or not, and if Eiadh isn’t pregnant yet she will be soon.”

“If you can just figure out how it’s done.”

He had pushed a bit too far, he discovered, for Elemak swung his left arm around and smacked him square on the nose with his palm.

“Gaah! Aah!” Mebbekew grabbed at his nose, and sure enough his hands came away bloody. “You peedar! Hooy sauce!”

“Yeah, right,” said Elemak. “I love how pain makes you eloquent.”

“Now I’ve got blood all over my clothes.”

“It’ll only help you bring off the illusion of being manly,” said Elemak. “Now listen to me, and listen close, because I mean this. I will
break
your nose next time, and I’ll go on breaking it every day if I see you plotting anything against anybody. I tried one time to break free of this whole sickening thing, but I couldn’t do it, and you know why.”

“Yeah, the Oversoul is better with ropes than I am,” said Meb.

“So we’re stuck with it, and our wives are going to have babies, and they’re going to grow up to be our children.
Do you understand that? This company, these sixteen people we’ve got here, that’s going to be the whole world that our children grow up in. And it’s not going to be a world where a little ossly-ope like you goes around murdering people because they didn’t let him shoot a baboon. Do you understand me?”

“Sure,” said Meb. “It’ll be a world where big tough hemen like
you
get their jollies by smacking people around.”

“You won’t get smacked again if you behave,” said Elemak. “There’ll be no killing, period. Because no matter how smart you think you are, I’ll be there before you, waiting for you, and I’ll tear you apart. Do you understand me, my little actor friend?”

“I understand that you’re sucking up to Nafai for all you’re worth,” said Mebbekew. He half expected Elemak to hit him again. Instead Elya chuckled.

“Maybe so,” said Elemak. “Maybe I am, for the moment. But then, Nafai is also sucking up to
me
, too, in case you didn’t notice. Maybe we’ll even make peace. What do you think of that?”

I think you’ve got camel kidneys where your brains should be, which is why your talk is nothing but hot piss in the dirt. “Peace sounds just wonderful, my dear kind gende older brother,” said Meb.

“Just remember that,” said Elemak, “and I’ll try to make your loving words come true.”

Rasa saw them come straggling home—Nafai first, with a hare in his poke, full of the triumph of making a kill, though of course, being Nafai, he tried vainly to conceal his pride; then Obring and Vas, looking tired and bored and sweaty and discouraged; and finally Elemak and Mebbekew, smug and jocular, as if
they
were the ones who had taken the hare, as if
they
were co-conspirators in the conquest of the universe. I’ll never understand them, thought Rasa. No two men could be more different—Elemak so strong and competent and ambitious and brutal, Mebbekew so weak and flimsy and lustful and sly—and yet they always seemed to be in on the same jokes, sneering
at everyone else from the same lofty pinnacle of private wisdom. Rasa could see how Nafai might annoy others, with his inability to conceal his own delight in his accomplishments, but at least he didn’t make other people feel dirty and low just by being near them, the way Mebbekew and Elemak did.

No, I’m being unfair, Rasa told herself. I’m remembering that dawn on the desert. I’m remembering the pulse pointed at Nafai’s head. I’ll never forgive Elemak for that. I’ll have to watch him every day of the journey, to make sure of the safety of my youngest son. That’s one good thing about Mebbekew—he’s cowardly enough that you don’t really have to fear anything from him.

“I know you’re hungry,” said Volemak. “But it’s early yet for supper, and the time will be well spent. Let me tell you the dream that came to me last night.”

They had already gathered, of course, and now they sat on the flat stones that Zdorab and Volya had dragged into place days ago for just this purpose, so all would have a place to sit off the ground, for meals, for meetings.

“I don’t know what it means,” said Volemak, “and I don’t know what it’s for, but I know that it matters.”

“If it matters so much,” said Obring, “why doesn’t the Oversoul just tell you what it means and have done?”

“Because, son-in-law of my wife,” said Volemak, “the dream didn’t come from the Oversoul, and he is just as puzzled by it as I am.”