Orson Card - The Memory of Earth

‘‘Crazy people like met" said Father.

"And I assure you that Luet is at least as sane as you are," Mother added.

Issib couldn't pass up the chance to cast a verbal dart. "As sane as Nyef? Then she's in deep trouble."

Father shut down Issib's teasing immediately. "You were saying the same thing yourself only a minute ago."

"I wasn't calling people crazy," said Issib.

"No, you didn't have Nafai's-what shall we call it?- pointed eloquence?

Nafai knew he could save himself now by shutting up and letting Issib deflect the heat. But he was committed to skepticism, and self-control wasn't his strong suit. "This girl," said Nafai. "Don't you see how she was leading you on, Father? She asks you a question, but she doesn't tell you beforehand what the answer will mean-so no matter what you answer, she can say, That's it, it's a true vision, definitely the Oversoul talking."

Father didn't have an immediate answer. Nafai glanced at Luet, feeling triumphant, wanting to see her squirm. But she wasn't squirming. She was looking at him very calmly. The intensity had drained out of her and now she was simply-calm. It bothered him, the steadiness of her gaze. "What are you looking at?" he demanded.

"A fool," she answered.

Nafai jumped to his feet. "I don't have to listen to you calling me a-"

"Sit down!" roared Father.

Nafai sat, seething.

"She just listened to you calling her a fraud," said Father. "I appreciate how both of my sons are doing exactly what I wanted you here to do-providing a skeptical audience for my story. You analyzed the process very cleverly and your version of things accounts for everything you know about it, just as neatly as Luet's version does."

Nafai was ready to help him draw the correct conclusion. "Then the rule of simplicity requires you to-"

"The rule of your father requires you to hold your tongue, Nafai. What you're both forgetting is that there's a fundamental difference between you and me."

Father leaned toward Nafai.

"I saw the fire."

He leaned back again.

"Luet didn't tell me what to think or feel at the time. And her questions helped me remember-helped me remember-the way it really happened. Instead of the way I was already changing it to fit my preconceptions. She knew that it would be strange-in exactly the ways that it was strange. Of course, I can't convince you."

"No," said Nafai. "You can only convince yourself."

"In the end, Nafai, oneself is the only person anyone can convince."

The battle was lost if Father was already making up aphorisms. Nafai sat back to wait for it all to end. He took consolation from the fact that it had been, after all, merely a dream. It's not as if it was going to change his life or anything.

Father wasn't done yet. "Do you know what I actually wanted to do, when I felt such urgency to get to the city? I wanted to warn people-to follow the old ways, to go back to the laws of the Oversold, or this place would burn."

"What place?" asked Luet, her intensity back again.

"This place. Basilica. The city. That's what I saw burning."

Again Father fell silent, looking into her burning eyes.

"Not the city," he said at last. "The city was only the picture that my mind supplied, wasn't it? Not the city. The whole world. All of Harmony, burning."

Rasa gasped. "Earth," she whispered.

"Oh, please," Nafai said. So Mother was going to connect Father's vision with that old story about the home planet that was burned by the Oversoul to punish humanity for whatever nastiness the current storyteller wanted to preach against. The all-purpose coercive myth: If you don't do what I say-I mean, what the Oversoul says-then the whole world will burn.

"I haven't seen the fire itself," said Luet, ignoring Nafai. "Maybe I'm not even seeing the same thing."

"What have you seen?" asked Father. Nafai cringed at how respectful he was being toward this girl.

"I saw the Deep Lake of Basilica, crusted over with blood and ashes."

Nafai waited for her to finish. But she just sat there.

"That's it? That's all?" Nafai stood up, preparing to walk out. "This is great, hearing the two of you compare visions. I saw a city on fire. Well, I saw a scum-covered lake."

Luet stood up and faced him. No, faced him down- which was ridiculous, since he was almost half a meter taller than her.

"You're only arguing against me," she said hotly, "because you don't want to believe what I told you about Eiadh."

That's ridiculous," said Nafai.

"You had a vision about Eiadh?" asked Rasa.

"What does Eiadh have to do with Nyeft" asked Issib.

Nafai hated her for mentioning it again, in front of his family, "You can make up whatever you want about other people, but you'd better leave me out of it."

"Enough," said Father. "We're done,"

Rasa looked at him in surprise. "Are you dismissing me in my own house?"

"I'm dismissing my sons."

"You have authority over your sons, of course." Mother was smiling, but Nafai knew from her soft speech that she was seriously annoyed. "However, I see no one here in my house but my students."

Father nodded, accepting the rebuke, then stood to leave. "Then I'm dismissing myself-I may do that, I hope."

"You may always leave, my adored mate, as long as you promise to come back to me."

His answer was to kiss her cheek.

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

‘What the Oversoul told me to do."

"And what is fire?"

"Warn people to return to the laws of the Oversoul or the world will burn."

Issib was appalled. "That's crazy, Father!"

"I'm tired of hearing that word from the lips of my sons."

"But-prophets of the Oversoul don't say things like that. They're like poets, except all their metaphors have some moral lesson or they celebrate the Oversoul or-"

"Issya," said Wetchik, "all my life I've listened to these so-called prophecies-and the psalms and the histories and the temple priests-and I've always thought, if this is all the Oversoul has to say, why should I bother to listen? Why should the Oversoul even bother speaking, if this is all that's on his mind?"

"Then why did you teach us to speak to the Oversoul?" asked Issib.

"Because I believed in the ancient laws. And I did speak to the Oversoul myself, though more as a way of clarifying my own thoughts than because I actually thought that he was listening. Then last night-this morning-I had an experience that I never conceived of. I never wished for it. I didn't even know what it was until now, these last few minutes, talking to Luet. Now I know-what it feels like to have the Oversoul's voice inside you. Nothing like these poets and dreamers and deceivers, who write down whatever pops into their heads and then sell it as prophecy. What was in me was not myself, and Luet has shown me that she's had the same voice inside her. It means that the Oversoul is real and alive."

"So maybe it's real," said Issib. "That doesn't tell us what it w."

"It's the guardian of the world," said Wetchik. "He asked me to help. Told me to help. And I will."

"That's all temple stuff," said Issib. "You don't know anything about it. You grow exotic plants."

Father dismissed Issib's objections with a gesture.

"Anything the Oversoul needs me to know, he'll tell me." Then he headed for the door into the house.

Nafai followed him, only a few steps. "Father," he said.

Father waited.

The trouble was, Nafai didn't know what he was going to say. Only that he had to say it. That there was a very important question whose answer he had to have before Father left. He just didn't know what the question was.