The Ships of Earth: Homecoming: Volume 3 (6 page)

I ended the life of a helpless drunken man. There was no glory in that act. There was no decency. There was no cleverness or wisdom. I was not a good man when I did that.

〈You were my hands, Nafai. What I needed to do, you did for me.〉

They were my own hands, Oversoul. I could have said no. As I say no
now
, when you hint of my killing Elemak and Mebbekew. It will not happen. I will take no more lives for you.

〈I’ll keep that in mind as I make my plans for the future. But you
can
establish leadership. You
must
. Your father is too old and tired, and he relies on Elemak too much. He’ll
give in to your brother far too often, again and again he’ll surrender to him, until he has no will left at all.〉

So it’s better that he surrenders to me?

〈You won’t make him surrender anything. You’ll always lead
through
him, with great respect for him. If you lead, your father will remain a proud and powerful man. I’ve told you this. Now stand up and take your place.〉

Not yet. This is not the time for me to challenge Elemak. We need him to lead us through the desert.

〈And I tell you that he has no such qualms. At this very moment, even though he’s making love to Eiadh, he is picturing you tied up and abandoned in the desert, where you’ll soon discover, Nafai, that while I can influence bandits I can’t do a thing about the beasts and birds of prey, the insects that think of anything that doesn’t walk or fly or slither away as their next meal. They don’t listen to
me
, they simply act out what their genes require them to do, and you
will
die, and what will I do then without you?〉

Does he mean to act now, before we get to Father’s camp?

〈At last you’re listening.〉

What is his plan, then?

〈I don’t know. He never thinks of it plainly. I’m searching as best I can, but it’s hard. I can’t just ransack a human’s memories, you know. He fears his own murderous heart so much that he won’t let himself think of his whole plan openly.〉

Perhaps when he’s not distracted by lovemaking.

〈Distracted? He’s even doing
this
for your benefit. He thinks that you still want Eiadh, so he’s hoping you notice the movement in the tent, and the noises she’s making.〉

It only makes me long for my watch to end, so I can go back to Luet.

〈He can’t conceive of a man not desiring the woman he desires.〉

I did. I fancied that Eiadh was exactly what I needed and wanted. But I understood nothing then. Luet believes she’s already pregnant. Luet and I can talk about everything. We’ve only been married for a few days, yet she understands
my heart even better than you do, and I can speak her thoughts almost before she thinks them. Does Elemak imagine that I could desire a mere woman, when Luet is my
wife?

〈He knows that Eiadh is attracted to you. He remembers that you were once attracted to her. He also knows that I have chosen you to lead. He’s mad with jealousy. He hungers for your death. It consumes him so that even the act of making love to her is a kind of murder in his heart.〉

Don’t you realize that this is the most terrible thing of all? If there’s anything I want in my life, it’s for Elemak to love me and respect me. What did I do, to turn him away?

〈You refused to let him own your will.〉

Love and respect have nothing to do with controlling what other people do.

〈To Elemak, if he doesn’t control you, you either don’t exist or you’re his enemy. For many years you didn’t exist. Then he noticed you, and you weren’t as easy to manipulate or intimidate as Mebbekew, and so you became a rival.〉

Is it really that simple?

〈I glossed over the hard parts.〉

His tent isn’t bouncing. Does that mean he’s coming out soon?

〈He’s getting dressed. He’s thinking of you. So is Eiadh.〉

At least she doesn’t want to kill me.

〈If she ever got what she’s wishing for, it would end the same, with you dead.〉

Don’t tell Luet that Elemak is planning to kill me.

〈I’ll tell Luet everything, exactly as I tell
you
. I don’t lie to the humans who serve my cause.〉

You lie to us whenever you think it’s necessary. And I don’t want you to lie to her, anyway—I just don’t want her to worry.

〈I
do
want her to worry, since you refuse to. I think sometimes you want to die.〉

You can relieve your mind on that score. I like being alive and intend to continue.

〈I think sometimes you look forward to death, because you think that you deserve to die for having killed Gaballufix.〉

Here he comes.

〈Notice how he makes sure you smell his hands.〉

Nafai didn’t appreciate the Oversoul’s calling attention to that—he might not have noticed, otherwise. But, truth to tell, that was unlikely, because Elemak made a point of putting both hands on his shoulders, and even of brushing his fingers across Nafai’s cheek as he said, “So you
did
stay awake. Maybe you’ll amount to something in the desert after all.”

“You didn’t leave me on watch all that long,” Nafai answered.

The womanly smell was plain enough. It was vaguely disgusting that Elemak would use his intimacy with his own wife this way. It was as if she had become nothing to him. A tool. Not a wife at all, but just a
thing
that he owned.

But if the Oversoul was right, then that was how Elemak experienced love—as ownership.

“Did you see anything?” asked Elemak.

“Darkness,” said Nafai. He did not tell Elemak about the bandits only a few hundred meters away. First, it would only make him furious that Nafai was getting information from the Oversoul. And second, it would humiliate him that he chose as his campsite a place where bandits could conceal themselves so close. He would probably insist on searching for them, which would mean battle and bloodshed, or waking everybody up and moving on, which would be pointless, since the Oversoul was having no trouble keeping this spineless group of cutpurses under control.

“If you ever looked up, you’d notice there are stars,” said Elemak.

Elemak was baiting him, of course, and Nafai knew that he should just ignore him, but he was filled with anger already,
knowing that Elemak was plotting to kill him and yet still pretended to be his brother, knowing that Elemak had just made love to his wife in order to try to make Nafai suffer from jealousy. So Nafai could not contain himself. He flung a hand upward. “And that one is Sol, the Sun. Barely visible, but you can always find it if you know where to look. That’s where we’re going.”

“Are we?” asked Elemak.

“It’s the only reason the Oversoul brought us out of Basilica,” said Nafai.

“Maybe the Oversoul won’t necessarily get his way,” said Elemak. “He’s just a computer, after all—you said so yourself.”

Nafai almost answered again, some snide comment to the effect that if the Oversoul was “just” a computer then Elemak himself was “just” a hairless baboon. Six months ago Nafai
would
have said it, and Elemak would have thrown him against a wall or knocked him down with a blow. But Nafai had learned a little since then, and so he held his tongue.

Luet was waiting for him in the tent. She had probably been dozing—she had worked hard since they started laying camp, and unlike the lazy ones she would be up early again in the morning. But she greeted him wordlessly with open eyes and a smile that warmed him in spite of the chill that Elemak had put in his heart.

Nafai undressed quickly and gathered her to him under the blankets. “You’re warm,” he said.

“I think the technical term is
hot
,” she answered.

“Elemak is planning to kill me,” he whispered.

“I wish the Oversoul would just
stop
him,” she whispered.

“I don’t think it can. I think Elemak’s will is too strong for the Oversoul to make him change his mind once he’s set on doing something.” He didn’t tell her that the Oversoul had hinted that somewhere along the line Nafai might have to kill his brother. Since Nafai had no intention of ever doing it, there was no reason to put the idea in Luet’s
mind. He would be ashamed to say it anyway, for fear she would then think he might consider such a thing.

“Hushidh thinks she senses Elemak bonding more closely with the ones who want to turn back—Kokor and Sevet, Vas and Obring, Meb and Dol. They’re forming a sort of community now, and separating almost completely from the rest of us.”

“Shedemei?”

“She wants to turn back, but there’s no bond between her and the others.”

“So only you and I and Hushidh and Mother want to go on into the desert.”

“And Eiadh.
She
wants to go wherever
you
go.”

They both laughed, but Nafai understood that Luet needed reassurance that Eiadh’s desire for him was not reciprocated. So he reassured her thoroughly, and then they slept.

In the morning, with the camels packed, Elemak called them together. “A couple of things,” he said. “First, Rasa and Shedemei have proposed it and I agree with them completely. While we’re living in the desert, we can’t afford to have the kind of sexual freedom we had in Basilica. It would only cause rancor and disloyalty, and that’s a death sentence for a caravan. So as long as we remain in the desert—and that includes at Father’s camp, and anywhere else that our population consists of just us and the three who are waiting for us—this is the law: There’ll be no sleeping with anyone except your own husband or wife, and all marriages as they presently stand are permanent.”

Immediately there was a gasp of shock from several; Luet looked around and saw that it was the predictable ones—Kokor and Obring and Mebbekew—who were most upset.

“You have no right to make a decision like that,” said Vas mildly. “We’re all Basilicans, and we live under Basilican law.” .

“When we’re in Basilica we live under Basilican law,” said Elemak. “But when you’re in the desert you live
under desert law, and desert law has it that the word of the caravan leader is final. I’ll listen to any ideas until I have to make a decision, but once the decision is made
any
resistance is mutiny, do you understand me?”

“No one tells me who I
must
sleep with and who I may
not
,” said Kokor.

Elemak walked up to her and faced her; she looked so frail compared to the sheer mass of Elemak’s tall, wellmuscled body. “And I tell you that in the desert, I won’t have anyone creeping from tent to tent. It will lead to murder one way or another, and so instead of letting you improvise the dying, I’ll let you know right now: If anyone is caught in a position that even
looks
like you’re getting sexually involved with someone you aren’t married to, I will personally kill the woman on the spot.”

“The
woman
!” cried Kokor.

“We need the men to help load the camels,” said Elemak. “Besides, the idea shouldn’t seem strange to
you
, Koya, since you made exactly the same decision the last time
you
decided that somebody should die for the crime of adultery.”

Luet could see how both Kokor and her sister Sevet immediately touched their throats—for it was in the throat that Kokor had struck Sevet, nearly killing her and leaving her almost voiceless ever since. While Kokor’s husband, Obring, who had been bouncing away just as merrily when Kokor found the two of them, was unscathed. It was viciously unkind and exactly appropriate for Elemak to remind them all of that event, because it completely silenced any kind of opposition to the new law from three of the four people most likely to oppose it: Kokor, Sevet, and Obring had nothing to say at all.

“You don’t have the right to decide this,” said Mebbekew. He was, of course, the fourth—but Luet knew that Elemak would have no trouble bringing him into line. He never did, with Meb.

“I not only have the right,” said Elemak, “I have the duty. This is a law necessary for the survival of our little company in the desert, and so it will be obeyed or I will
enforce the only penalty that I
can
enforce here, so many kilometers from civilization. If you can’t grasp this idea, then I’m sure Lady Rasa can explain it to you.”

He turned and faced Rasa, in a silent demand that she back him up. She did not disappoint him. “I tried and tried all night to think of another way to handle this,” she said, “but we can’t live without this law, and as Elya says, in the desert the only penalty that means anything at all is . . . what he said. But not killing outright!” she said, clearly hating the whole idea of it. “Only binding and leaving a person.”

“
Only?
” said Elemak disdainfully. “It’s by far the cruder death.”

“It leaves her in the hands of the Oversoul,” Rasa said. “Perhaps to be rescued.”

“You should pray not,” said Elemak. “The animals are kinder than any rescuers she’d find out here.”

“A lawbreaker is to be bound and abandoned,
not
killed!” Rasa insisted.

Luet thought: She fears it will be a daughter of hers who will first break this law. As for Elemak’s rule that having only the woman die will better restrain the man, he has it backward. Few men think of consequences when they’re filled with desire, but a woman can put off her own desires if a man she loves would be at risk.

“As the lady wishes,” said Elemak. “The law of the desert leaves the choice up to the leader of the caravan. I would normally choose a quick, clean death by pulse, but let us hope that no such choice ever has to be made.” He looked around at the whole group, turning to include in his gaze the ones who were behind him. “I don’t ask for your consent in this,” he said. “I simply tell you that this is the way it will be. So now raise your hand if you understand the law we will live by.”

They all raised their hands, though clearly some were furious.

No, not quite all. “Meb,” said Elemak. “Raise your hand. You’re embarrassing your dear wife Dol. She’s no doubt beginning to wonder who is the woman here whose
love you consider so desirable that you would cause an imperfectly virtuous lady’s certain death by pursuing it.”