Orson Card - Earthfall

"Was it?" asked Eiadh. "If that was true, you would have stopped and listened to Oykib when he tried to tell you that it wasn't the angels who took Zhivya. Now please, stop arguing about it. Everybody's home safe and nobody was harmed."

Elemak shrugged off the hand she had laid upon his arm. "Don't patronize me, Eiadh."

"Don't be angry, Elemak," she said. "Zhivya was lost, and she's been restored to us. It's a day for rejoicing, not anger. You might even thank the ones who brought her back to us."

"Thank them? Because the Oversoul gave Nafai the only good weapon? Because they followed me on a foolish chase up the canyon because they knew it was foolish?"

Padarok stepped closer to Elemak. "No, Elemak. We followed you because we were afraid that you would do to one of us what you finally ended up doing to that harmless angel. And our fear was not unfounded. If you'll remember, you came very close to doing it to me?

Only now did Eiadh notice the bruises on Padarok's neck and jaws.

"If Father hadn't stood against you," said Padarok.

Elemak, his face red with rage-or was it shame?- answered contemptuously, "Do you think I stopped because of Us pathetic threats?"

"I don't know why you stopped," said Padarok. "But we never know whether you will stop. And so we obey you when you're angry and irrational, because we're afraid of you. And if you think about it without letting rage cloud your reason, you'll realize that we have cause to be afraid."

"Let's go home, Elya," said Eiadh again.

But Elemak was determined to have this out. "You would have let Zhivya die, because you were so afraid of me that you didn't dare to argue with me?"

Paradok shook his head. "We knew that Nafai would get her back, if it could be done at all."

"Nafai?" said Elemak. Then he roared. "Nafai! Nafai! Nafai! You trusted him to do it! You put my daughter's life in his hands! What does he know, that stupid, boastful boy, that snot-nosed little pretender, that-"

"He did it!" Eiadh screamed at him. "You stupid angry fool, he did save her, so they were right to trust him!" Her screaming frightened the baby, who started to cry. But Eiadh couldn't stop now. "And they knew that if you stayed here, you'd just do some angry stupid thing and cause a disaster, so it was better to have you off up the canyon where you wouldn't start a war between us and the diggers. Do you get it now, Elemak? Now that you've made us tell you more than we ever meant to, will you finally understand what you Are to us? We know that if anything delicate needs to be done, yauV belter not be there, because you'll always, always, always do something like what you did to that angel!"

For a moment Eiadh felt the thrill of having finally blurted out the truth, of having struck down the pride-ful man who had complicated her life so much for all these years.

Then she saw something she had never seen before. Elemak didn't rage. His shoulders slumped. He visibly wilted. He looked at no one, met no one's gaze. He just turned his back and walked into the forest.

"I'm sorry, Elya," she called after him. "I was angry, I didn't mean it."

But he knew she meant it. Everyone knew she meant it, and everyone knew that what she had said was true.

Everyone had known it for years. Finally, today, Elemak knew it too.

He came back the next day. Quiet, subdued. A different man. A broken man. Eiadh tried to apologize to him when they were alone in the house, but he walked out the door and wouldn't listen. They shared their bed, but he never reached out to her. He would answer the children when they asked him questions, and sometimes he would play with them and laugh and smile like the old days. But he didn't come to any of the meetings of the adults, and when Eiadh tried to involve him in decisions about their own household, he always answered the same way. "Whatever you want," he said. "I don't care."

And he didn't care, or so it seemed. He did his work in the fields, but he no longer had any ideas about what others should do. He simply did what he was asked. He worked hard. He exhausted himself, in fact. But he still seemed invisible.

I killed him, thought Eiadh.

Or maybe, just maybe, I took the first step toward healing him.

She would cling to that hope, she decided. This puzzling, quiet, withdrawn personality was just a stage in his development into a mature, wise, self-restrained, good man.

A man like Nafai.

TWELVE - FRIENDS

Shedemei asked Volemak for a meeting of all those involved in dealing with the two sentient species. "There are decisions to be made," she said, and so when the evening meal was done, they gathered in the ship's library: Volemak and Shedemei, of course, and along with them Nafai and Luet, Issib and Hushidh, and Oykib and Chveya. "I invited Elemak," Volemak explained, "because he had so much experience back on Harmony, dealing with strange cultures and foreign leaders. He declined to come, but I'm still going to ask him to work with the diggers, at least. They're the ones who are living practically on top of us-"

"Actually, we're living on top of them" said Nafai.

Volemak paused for a moment of patience, as if saying silently, When will the boy grow up enough not to make jokes during serious discussions? Luet leaned over to Nafai and jabbed his leg with her finger He grinned stupidly at her.

Volemak went on. "And it's imperative that we reach a workable living arrangement. I don't know about you, but what I saw the night of the kidnapping was a seriously conflicted digger society-an abduction organized by the son of the blood king, contrasted with the worship from the wife of the war king. The very fact that the wife-what's her name?"

"Emeezem," said Oykib.

"The fact that Emeezem succeeded where, um... ."

"Mufruzhuuzh."

"Where Muffle-whatever had failed may have weakened him. Therefore we can count on there being a faction that wants to rid the Earth of human beings, and perhaps two-Mufya's and the plotters who did the actual kidnapping. I think Elemak can be valuable in reaching some kind of understanding with the hostile ones."

"If he'll do it," said Hushidh. "He isn't very closely bonded right now with anyone. Not even Protchnu, since the boy couldn't keep himself from bragging to his father about how he was the one who discovered the entrance to the digger city up in a tree. It wasn't a welcome topic at home."

"You saw this domestic scene?" asked Volemak.

"I heard about it from an eyewitness," said Hushidh.

"So it's gossip," said Volemak.

"First-generation gossip," said Hushidh, "Very accurate. The best quality."

Volemak smiled, then repeated firmly. "Gossip."

Nafai spoke up. "I think Elemak's the natural choice to work with the diggers."

"There won't be just one," said Volemak. "And do us all a favor, Nafai. Don't let it be known that you favor the idea of Elemak having such an assignment."

Nafai nodded, suddenly serious. But Luet was not impressed. She knew that he understood, intellectually, that it was a bad idea for him to keep trying to be nice to Elemak. Just yesterday Luet had tried to explain it to him again, and he had interrupted her and explained it right back. "Elemak doesn't see my eagerness to give him authority as trust or kindness, he sees it as condescension and gloating, I know. But it's not gloating and it's not condescension, Luet. I really do admire his abilities and I trust him to do an excellent job of whatever he's doing. I can't help wanting to reach out to him."