Orson Card - Earthfall

"But Panimanya is with us," said Nafai.

"So am I," said Sevet.

They went to Kokor's door. It stood open, but she was not standing there as Sevct had been. They came inside, quietly, and found that she was not alone in her bed. Mebbekew lay beside her, naked and sweating in the damp heat of the night. But Mebbekew was asleep, while Kokor's eyes were already open when they came inside.

They said nothing, for fear that Meb might come awake. Kokor looked at them in the darkness, blinking. Nafai nodded to her, beckoned, and then led Sevet outside. They waited several paces from the house. Soon she came out, still arranging her dothing, "You're leaving," she said softly. "I dreamed it."

"Will you come with us?" asked Nafai.

Kokor looked at Sevet, her eyes widening. "Us?" she asked.

"You can stay with him if you want to, Kokor," said Sevet. "I think he does love you."

"He doesn't love anybody," said Kokor.

"I didn't mean Meb," said Sevct.

"I know," said Kokor. "But can't I come with you if I want to?"

"There's no going back," said Nafai. "And in our new city, we'll respect the law."

They understood what he was telling them. "I think perhaps we've had our fill," said Sevet.

Kokor rolled her eyes. "I will never have my fill," she said. "But I know it won't be Basilica. I'll be good."

"Are you sure you wouldn't be happier if you stayed?" asked Nafai,

"Don't you want us to come with you?" asked Kokor.

"Of course I do," he answered.

"Give us some credit, Nafai," said Kokor. "We can tell the difference between you and Elemak. We know steel from cheap tin when we see it."

"Then let's go," said Nafai. "There's a long journey ahead of us tonight."

Oykib was already leading the long procession out onto the forest path, so that only a few remained when Nafai got there, among them Rasa and Zdorab on the launch. Shedemei was there, too.

"Seal the ship," said Nafai. "They can't get in if you don't let them."

"I know," she said. "The ship will be safe."

"Don't try to be heroic," said Nafai. "We'll be fine."

"You need more than one night's head start," said Shedemei.

Nafai shook his head, obviously intending to argue further. But she reached out a hand and touched his lips to silence him. "Nyef, my dear friend, I'm the star-master now. You go lead your colony into the wilderness. I will tend the ship and decide how the powers of the cloak are to be used."

Shedemei embraced Rasa and Zdorab and then waved as the launch rose into the sky and soared over the tops of the trees, passing all the other travelers who were trudging along the road. Then she embraced Nafai and returned to the ship.

Nafai was the last to set out on the road. He thought he was alone, when suddenly he found himself surrounded by a dozen diggers. His first thought was that the Keeper had failed, that while the Oversoul was able to keep his human enemies asleep, the diggers had been able to awaken. This is how I'll die, he thought.

Then he saw that they weren't armed, and half of them were women.

"Take us with you," said one of them in digger language.

Nafai wasn't as fluent in that tongue as Oykib was, but he could understand them. "And live among the angels?" he asked. "They'll never trust you."

"We would rather be servants to the... angels," said the woman who was speaking for them all. Nafai noticed that she did not say skymeat, but rather struggled to form her lips and tongue around the strange sounds of the angels' own word for people. "Fusum is the most terrible god."

Nafai nodded. "It will be hard for you among the angels," he said, "but you have my protection, and I will trust you unless you teach me that I can't. Do all of you take an oath to obey me and harm none of my people, humans or angels?"

They took the oath, and so he let them follow him. There was consternation among the angels when they arrived, but Nafai's assurances and their own humble pleas won the grudging acceptance of the angels. It was still dark when they left the angel village empty, and set out into the new country to build a new city, of a new kind.

When, after many days of travel, they reached the place that Nafai had chosen years before, knowing that this day might come, pTo and Poto held a little ceremony. "A place must have a name," they said. "And since we will always be known as the Nafari-" the word their lips pronounced was more like Dapati, but they were understood "-then we think this must now be called the land of Nafai-" Dapai "-and you are the one we choose to lead us all."

The voices rang out so loud in approbation that Nafai could only smile and say, "No man could be more happily praised than to have his friends choose to name their home after him." But despite the modesty of his words, they all knew what the naming meant. Nafai was their king. Their war king. And they would gladly die for him.

SIXTEEN - STARMASTER

Shedemei heard what Issib said to her through the Index. "It's dawn, and we're well away from the village, but we're slow, Shedya, and an army of diggers could have us by noon."

To this Shedemei replied, "There will be no army today or tomorrow."

"Just remember, Shedya," Issib answered. "There's only one of you to protect all of us. Don't be noble. Don't be fair. Prevail."

"Good advice, Issya, Now let me go and follow it."

For all her confidence, Shedemei was reluctant to leave the shelter of the starship, to make the door seal itself behind her. Wearing the cloak gave her a feeling of connection and closeness to every part of the ship, but in truth she had felt not very differently before. The ship was where her tools were, her library, her work, her career, herself. Stepping out into the village-the remnant of the village, the mostly deserted human-built houses-she was becoming someone else. Nafai must have relished this, thought Shedemei, this feeling of power, of control. But I don't. I'm not interested to find out how much power can be focused through my flesh. I have no desire to know just how strong a jolt I can give someone without killing him.

To be fair, Nafai might not have loved it cither. But good-hearted as he might be, he was a man, and men seemed to find an obscene amount of pleasure in having the upper hand, in winning. Shedemei, on the other hand, simply wanted to know. But maybe it wasn't a matter of men and women. Maybe it was just that She-demei's connection to other people was never very strong, compared to her love for her work, her devotion to understanding the way life worked. Is that really different, though? she wondered. Nafai and Elemak were born to rule men and determined to win out over each other. But I feel myself also born to rule, not men or women but organisms, genetic codes, life systems, ecologies. And, like Nafai and Elemak, I will have my way.

The problem today would not be Elemak, not really. The problem would be the diggers. Shedemei could easily stop Elemak and his few human followers. But there was no way she could seek out and block all of Fusum's soldiers, and they were the ones who would do the killing if they reached the Nafari while they were traveling, encumbered as they were by children and infants, by supplies and flocks and herds.

So whatever Shedemei did, she would have to persuade the diggers that they must wait; if the diggers did not go, then Elemak would also have to wait.

Thus it was that Shedemei walked through the village, paying no attention to the shouting as Elemak, Mebbekew, and Protchnu searching all the houses, ransacked them, really, screaming to each other about the betrayal, about all those who had gone. Mebbekew saw her and called out to her, then went howling off to find Elemak, crying out that Shedemei had stayed, Shedemei couldn't leave the ship after all. "We have the laboratories! We have the computers! We have the Oversoul!" Time enough to disabuse him of this delusion later.