Orson Card - Earthfall

"Just remember," Elemak told him, as Fusum splunged noisily into his meal. "If there comes a time whey you think you can do just as well without me, I will see that thought in your mind before you notice it yourself, and when you turn around to put a knife in me, you'll find that my knife is already in you."

Fusum laughed, the wheezy, hissy laugh of a diggerman. "Now I know I can trust you with my life."

"You can," said Elemak. "All I'm telling you is that I will never trust you with mine"

When Nafai and Luet, Issib and Hushidh set out for the village of the angels, they carried their tools on their backs-or, in Issib's case, on the chair he had following behind him. Yasai and Oykib had climbed to the chosen spot the week before and placed the relay array, so that Issib could float easily up the pathway into the canyon. But his chair was there in case of bad weather, or in case someone stole some of his floats while he slept.

Their little children they left behind in the care of others. If all went well in their first contact with the village of the angels, they would build houses and then come back down to retrieve the children-along with seeds, extra clothing, and materials for teaching. They hoped to have a working farm in time for the full growing season at that elevation. If all went well. pTo and Poto led the way up the canyon, quickly rising up into the air from time to time, then circling back down so that the humans could talk to them when they caught up. They were all quite aware that many among the angels had rejected the idea of befriending the humans-the Old Ones. But they had prepared the script that they thought would win them over, or at least win permission for the four humans to dwell among them. And when at last they reached the top of the canyon, the very meadow where pTo's bones had been broken, wing torn, blood spilt, they stopped and played it out. pTo perched on Nafai's head, and Poto on Luet's. Their feet pressed, lightly but firmly, against the humans' jaws. And their wings unfolded, wrapped around Nafai's and Luet's shoulders, like cloaks, like tents.

"Like nests," said Luet.

Nafai nodded. For although they had never seen an angel nest with their own eyes, they had heard the descriptions pTo and Poto gave them, they had looked at the drawings they made, and finally they dreamed them and awoke from the dreams sure that the Keeper of Earth had shown them the truth. Woven and thatched out of supple twigs and grasses, the nests were really roofs sheltering the branches where the wives and young ones slept, hanging head down, wrapped in the blanket of their own wings.

Somewhere in the branches, in the surrounding trees, they knew the angels were watching them. Judging them.

Issib glided forward, his feet not touching the ground; Hushidh followed him, quietly telling him where the angels were, and which ones did not seem well connected to pTo and Poto. Those were the ones who needed to be won over, of course, and Issib, standing in the air-a trick that no one else, not even Nafai with his cloak, could do-he overawed them, the god visible, the only one who could fly.

"Where is Iguo, when her husband comes home to her?" Issib called out loudly in the language of the angels. He knew his voice would be hard to understand, pitched as low as it was, but he spoke quickly, hoping that the consonants would be enough of a guide to help them grasp his words.

No one emerged from the forest, but that was no surprise, not yet.

"His wing was torn, but now there is no tear in it. Do you think we will harm you, we who can heal the torn wing of a brave explorer?"

Still no one came forward.

"When the angry Old One harmed pTo, it was because he thought it was you, the people, who carried off his baby. We did not yet know the dark underground way of the devils."

Luet had argued against using the angels' word for the diggers, but Issib had insisted that they had to speak to them in language they would understand. "After all, Elya and Okya call the angels skymeat when they talk to the diggers, don't they?" Issib had pointed out. Everyone agreed then that devils was certainly no worse a word to use than that.

Issib went on addressing the invisible angels. "Now we know that the people do not come down the canyon to steal our children. Instead we see that when one brave man has been stricken down unjustly, his otherself, a man as brave as the first, will come down to care for him and save him if he can."

At last a few of the angels began letting themselves be seen, hopping forward to the leading branches of the trees that surrounded the clearing. Some of them stood upright atop the branches; others hung from them, head downward. It was dizzying to watch them, but Issib went on. "Now we know that the people who might have stopped brave Poto chose to let him come. These are the people who hoped for friendship with us, with the Old Ones who have been brought home by the Keeper of Earth."

There had been some argument about that, too. The angels had no concept of the Keeper of Earth, but Nafai had insisted that the name must be introduced from the beginning. "They'll find out soon enough that we aren't gods," Nafai had said. "Let it never be said we lied to them."

"As we lied to the diggers?" asked Luet mildly.

"We aren't trying to rescue a kidnapped baby from the angels," Nafai pointed out. "We're trying to make friends with people who have only seen us be mindlessly cruel. We're not going to let them see us as gods, even if we do get their attention by having Issib do his hovering trick."

So now Issib spoke the name of the Keeper of Earth, using the translation that pTo and Poto had given them, when they finally understood what and who the Keeper was. Or rather, when they understood as much as the humans did, as much as they could explain with their rudimentary mastery of the angels' difficult language.

"The Old Ones ask you to forgive us for our mistake, We did not know you then, but we know you now. Through these two brave and virtuous men we know you. Through the healing of pTo's wing you know us.

Let the four of us dwell among you. But first, let Iguo come forward to join her husband. Come and see, Iguo, that his body is whole, that it is truly pTo that we have brought back to you."

They waited then, doing nothing, saying nothing except for pTo's and Poto's occasional murmurs of reassurance. Patience. Have patience. This is a difficult thing, for them to decide whether to let Iguo come to us.

She came, fluttering awkwardly under the branches of the nearer trees until she reached the clearing. Her awkwardness, they soon saw, was because two infants clung to the fur of her chest, unbalancing her as she flew. pTo gasped in surprise, while Poto sang in delight. "Sons," he sang. "The wife of the broken one gave him sons while he healed. Now his joy is doubled and doubled again, for he returns to the woman he left as a wife and finds her now as a mother." pTo leapt from Luet's head and landed before his wife. The two of them spoke softly, rapidly, the music of their voices beautiful together even though none of the humans could make sense of the words they said. As Iguo inspected pTo's body, especially the wing that had once been torn, pTo in his turn examined the two babies that she left in the grass at his feet. They could stand, even if they could not fly, and though their words were halting and babyish, they knew to call him Father, and pTo wept shamelessly to be able to touch them with his fingertips and his tongue, to have them climb up his body and frolic under the canopy of his wings.

At last Iguo turned back to the waiting angels. "What cannot be healed has been healed," she said. "What was lost forever has been found. Therefore let that which cannot be forgiven be forgiven, and let friendship bind the guests who have come to us, weave them into our hearts and our families, our nests and our trees."