Orson Card - Earthfall

For Fusum would come into power. Of that Elemak was certain, for the more he heard from the kidnappers, the more he felt he knew Fusum, knew how he thought, what he felt, what he wanted, and what he would do to get what he wanted.

What he wanted was simple: power.

And what would he do to get it? Whatever it took.

Elemak knew Fusum, yes, because he wets Fusum. Or at least he might be Fusum, if this son of the blood king had sense enough to understand the situation and bide his time as Elemak was doing.

So the day came when Shedemei brought Fusum's suspended animation chamber into readiness.

"I'd like to be alone with him when he comes to," said Elemak.

She looked at him steadily. "And why is that?"

"Because I know him," said Elemak. "From what the others have said. This one is dangerous, and if he's to be tamed I have to show him who is master. If you're here, he'll see that there is some other human involved. He won't know that I'm in sole control of every aspect of his life. Do you see?"

"I see," said Shedemei. "But I don't agree."

"But you will leave me alone with him," said Elemak.

"I will because Volemak said to let you handle things your way." She turned her back on him and left.

After a while, the lid slid back and Fusum lay before him, blinking his eyes, trying to understand his surroundings. Elemak reached down with one hand, took him by the throat, and raised him up almost to a sitting position, screaming at him in the most fluent and colorful digger language, "You stole my daughter! You were going to eat her! Is that the warrior you are, the kind who can fight babies but you cower in front of men?"

Fusum's first response was not fear but rage. Elemak was glad to see that, how Fusum reached out with arms still weak from the suspended animation drugs and tried to rake Elemak's heart out of his chest. Very good. Not a whiner, are you? "So now you attack me, you fool!" Still gripping him by his throat, Elemak yanked him up and out of the chamber and flung him against the opposite wall.

Ah, yes, this one wasn't a weak and fragile toy like the angel had been. This one rebounded, his body unbroken, his teeth bared and his hands ready for fighting. But he had been weakened and he was groggy. It wasn't a fair fight, which was exactly as Elemak wanted it. This was about authority and dominance, not justice. If it were about justice, Elemak would have strangled him in his sleep.

Fusum leapt at him-a high, springing movement that might have caught Elemak off guard if he hadn't already had the kidnappers demonstrate their fighting technique in mock gladiatorial combats. Just to learn the words for each of the things you do, he had told them. Well, he learned the words. He also figured out the physical reply. And so it was that Fusum found his own weight used against him as he was thrown again, this time down the corridor, so that he landed skidding and sliding until he fetched up against the back wall.

With a growl he leapt back into combat, but his feet made poor purchase on the smooth floor and he could never build up enough momentum to knock Ekmak off his feet or even unbalance him for a moment. By the time the drugs wore off he was physically exhausted and humiliated by his endless defeats at Elemak's hands.

Finally, when Fusum could move no more, Elemak seized him by a hind leg and dragged him along the corridor to the central ladder, then carried him up to the room where he would be kept in lockdown when Elemak wasn't with him. During the trip he made no effort to protect the digger's head and body from pain, nor did he permit Fusum to get enough leverage or balance to protect himself. And when he got to the room, he threw Fusum into it, followed him in, shut the door, and stood there laughing.

The diggers didn't laugh the way that humans did, but the message was clearly getting across. Fusum rose onto his hind legs, exposing his pink hairless belly. "Are you going to sacrifice me like a man?" Fusum asked. "Here's my belly, take my heart and entrails and eat them before my eyes-I don't care, I'll eat as much of it myself as I can get away from you!"

Elemak knew brave posturing when he saw it. "I'd sooner eat my own feces than have any of your cowardly blood on my lips."

"So you mean to give me a coward's death, then. Here's my throat. Cut it, I don't care. Life is nothing to me because now that you gods are here, men are nothing. There are no men. Only women and cowards with two tails."

Elemak couldn't help but laugh again. Such defiance! He was such a boy, this one. But then, it would have been disappointing if he had reacted any other way. An Obring would have been groveling and pleading for his life. A Vas would have been sullen and silent. A Mebbekew would have been trying to bargain, to strike a deal. But this one, Fusum, he really was a man, doing his best to take any sense of joy and triumph out of Elemak's victory.

"Fool," said Elemak in digger language. "I don't want you dead. I want you to be king,"

That silenced the digger as nothing else could have.

"Your father is worthless," said Elemak. "Emeezem rules over him. Mufruzhuuzh isn't a war leader, he might as well be wingless skymeat for all the good he does. I thought maybe your conspirators, those four who did the kidnapping, I thought perhaps they were men, but they are nothing, they gladly offered to trade you for their own lives, and blamed you for everything." Elemak mimicked their voices, making them breathy and feminine, "Oh, Fusum deceived us. He made us. It wasn't our fault. If we'd known you were really gods"

Fusum hissed in reply, spraying saliva across Elemak's entire side of the room. It was the ultimate gesture of contempt. It would have provoked a deadly battle, if Elemak were a digger.

Elemak only laughed. "If your spittle were poison, it might be worth spending it on me. But there's no point in it. If you intend to save your people, to keep them out of slavery to us, then I'm the only hope you've got."

"If you're my hope I have no hope."

"You really are a fool, aren't you. But what can I expect from you? After all, I'm a god, and you're an earth-crawling worm."

"I am no worm, and you... ."

"Go on, Fusum, my dear little boy, my helpless lovey baby, say the rest of it."

Fusum shook his head.

"You were going to say, ‘And you are no god.' Weren't you? Let's be honest with each other."

"I felt your hands on my body," said Fusum. "They were no god-hands."

"Oh really," said Elemak. "No doubt you've had many gods handle you before, so you know how their hands feel."

Fusum didn't answer.

"I'll tell you what my hands felt like. They felt like they belonged to a man who is stronger, smarter, faster, and more filled with hate than you."

Fusum studied him. "A man, you say."

"I say a man," said Elemak. "Not a god."

"Stronger, yes," said Fusum. "Today, anyway. Faster today. Smarter-perhaps. Today."

"Forever, Fusum," said Elemak. "In ten thousand years your whole people couldn't learn what I know right now."

"Smarter," said Fusum, conceding the point. "But never filled with more hate than me."

"Do you think not?" said Elemak, "Let's compare stories, shall we?"

They did. And when that first long day together was done, when Elemak at last brought food to Fusum, they were no longer prisoner and guard, or hostage and master, or man and god. They were allies, two men out of power among their own people, but determined to use each other's friendship to gain ascendancy over their rivals among their own people. It would take patience and planning. It would take time. But they had time, hadn't they? And patience could be learned one day after another. Elemak was doing it, wasn't he? Fusum could do the same.