Earthborn (Homecoming) (17 page)

“Basilica was ruined half a millennium ago. My people are all dead. My nation of birth is irretrievable. Everything I ever felt myself to be a part of is dead, except my gardens. Do you really want me to become part of Akmaro and Chebeya, to begin to feel about them the way I once felt about Rasa and her household, about my friends, about my husband and my children?”

“Then leave me alone.”

“Health! What does this have to do with health?”

Shedemei shuddered. She didn’t want the Oversoul meddling like this. She was just
fine
on her own. Zdorab was gone, her children were gone, and that was
fine,
she had work to do, she didn’t need distractions. Her health indeed!

Akma sat on the brow of the hill, exhausted from the day’s work, but so filled with fury that even lying down wouldn’t have been rest. And lying down he couldn’t have watched his father stand there teaching the people—with Pabulog’s vile sons sitting in the front row of the listeners. After all they had done to
him, Father could bring them in and seat them in the place of honor? Of course Father and Mother made a great show of wanting him to sit there in the center of the front row, where he had always sat till now. But to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with the lying Didul, the arrogant Pabul, the brutal Udad, the pathetic slimy sneaky little Muwu—Father had to know that it was more shame than Akma could bear.

So he sat here on the hilltop, looking now at the campfires of the digger guards, now down at the gathering of Akma’s people. I can’t sort friends from enemies anymore. The diggers hurt nothing but my body; the Pabulogi stabbed at my pride; and my own father has told me that I’m nothing to him, nothing compared to the sons of his enemy.

Your enemies were my enemies, Father. For your sake, for loyalty to you, I bore whatever came to me and bore it proudly, because it was for you. And then you take my tormentors and talk to them as if they were also your sons. You even call them,
call
them sons. You dared to call that hypocritical encrustation of a skunk’s rectum “Diduldis”—beloved son!
Whose
son? Only the son of the man who tried to kill you, Father, who drove you out! Only the son of the man that for your sake I hated. And now you have given him a name that you should never have spoken to anyone but me. I am Akmadis—but not if
he
has the name Diduldis from your lips. If he is your son then I am not.

Again, as so many times before, Akma felt tears come to his eyes. But he fought them off—and he was getting better at that, hiding his true feelings. Though of course sitting up here as the lone recusant certainly made it plain that he wasn’t happy about
something.

Mother was coming up the hill. Hadn’t she given up yet?

Oh, yes, she had. Luet was with her, and now Mother stopped and Luet came on ahead. Ah, of course. Father can’t do anything with nasty little
Akma, and Mother can’t make any headway with him, either. So send little Luet and see what she can do.

“Kmada!” she cried, when she was near enough.

“Why don’t you go back down and listen to Father?” said Akma coldly. But the hesitation in her eyes forced him to relent. What did she know of these matters? She was innocent, and he wasn’t going to be unjust to her. “Come here, Lutya, Ludayet.”

“Oooh, Kmada, that name is so
ugly
.”

“I think Ludayet is cute.”

“But Lutya is the name of the Hero.”

“The Hero’s wife,” said Akma.

“Father says the ancient women were heroes as much as the men.”

“Yes, well, that’s Father’s opinion. Father thinks diggers are people.”

“They are, you know. Because they have language. And there are good diggers and bad diggers.”

“Yes, I now,” said Akma. “Because most diggers are dead—those are the good ones.”

“Are you mad at me like you’re mad at Father?” asked Luet.

“I’m never mad at you.”

“Then why do you make me sit with that nasty pig boy?”

Akma laughed at her characterization of Muwu. “It wasn’t
my
idea.”

“It’s your idea to come up here and leave me alone.”

“Luet, I love you. But I won’t sit with the sons of Pabulog. Including Muwu.”

Luet nodded gravely. “All right. That’s what Father said—he said you weren’t ready.”

“Ready! I’ll never be ready.”

“So Mother said I can come up here and take my lessons from you.”

Inadvertently, taken by surprise, Akma looked down at his mother, who stood at the base of the hill, watching them. She must have sensed or at least guessed what turn the conversation had taken, for she nodded
her head just once and then turned away, walking back to the group that still listened to Akmaro teaching.

“I’m not a teacher,” said Akma.

“You know more than
me,”
said Luet.

Akma knew what Mother was doing—and it had to be with Father’s consent, so really it was Father doing it, too. If Akma won’t stay involved listening to the great teacher Akmaro—or should it be what Pabulog called him, Akmadi, the traitor?—then we’ll keep him involved by having him teach Luet. He won’t dare be unkind to her, nor will he be dishonest enough to teach her falsehood or vent his anger against his father.

It would serve them right if I taught Luet exactly how Father betrayed me. How he has been betraying us all along. Father decides to believe that crazy old man Binadi and ends up getting us all thrown out of the city, forced to live in the wilderness. And then, even as we’re being whipped by digger slavedrivers and tormented by Pabulog’s evil sons, Father teaches us that Binadi said that the Keeper wants us to think of diggers and angels as our
brothers,
to think of women as our
equals,
when anyone can see that women are smaller and weaker than men, and that diggers and angels aren’t even the same species. We might as well say we’re brothers of trees and uncles of termites. We might as well call snails our fathers and dungbeetles our sons.

But he said none of this to Luet. Instead he got a stick, pulled out enough tufts of grass to have a clear writing surface of dirt, and began writing words and quizzing her on them. He could teach his sister. It would be better than sitting here alone, being burned alive inside by rage. And he would not use Luet as a weapon to strike out at Father. That was another matter, to be settled at another time. A time when Didul wasn’t sitting there smirking at every word that Akma uttered. A time when he didn’t have to smell the musk that Pabul gave off like a randy buck. A time when he and Father could look each other in the face and speak the truth.

I won’t rest until Father admits how disloyal he’s been. Admits that he loves them more than me, and that it’s wrong for him to have been so unnatural as to forgive them without asking me first, without asking me to forgive him. How could he have acted as if forgiving them were the most natural thing in the world! And what right did
he
have to forgive them, when Akma still had not? It was Akma who had borne the worst of it. Everyone knew that. And in front of everyone, Father forgave them and took them through the water to make new men of them. Of course he made them say those stupid empty words of apology. We’re so
sorry,
Akma. We’re sorry, Luet. We’re sorry, everybody. We are no longer the evil men who did that. We’re now new men and true believers.

Am I the only one who isn’t fooled? Am I the only one who sees that they still plan to betray us? That someday soon their fathers will come and they’ll turn on us and we’ll pay for having trusted them?

I’ll
pay.

Akma shuddered, imagining what the sons of Pabulog would do to him, when they had once again revealed their true nature of pure evil. Father would be sorry then, but it would be Akma that would be punished for Father’s foolishness.

“Are you cold?’ asked Luet.

“Only a little,” said Akma.

“It’s very warm tonight,” said Luet. “You shouldn’t be cold unless you’re sick.”

“All right,” said Akma. “I won’t be cold anymore.”

“I can sit close up beside you and help you stay warmer.”

So she sat by him and he kept his arm around her shoulder as they studied the words he wrote in the dirt. She was very quick, this little girl. Smarter than any boy Akma knew. So maybe that part of Father’s teaching was true. Maybe girls were every bit as good as boys, when it came to learning, anyway. But anybody who could teach that a female digger was somehow
equal to this sweet, trusting little girl was either insane or dishonest. Which was Father? Did it matter?

They came down the hill in near darkness; the meeting was over. Luet led the way into the hut, chattering to Mother about the things that Akma had taught her.

“Thank you, Akma,” said Mother.

Akma nodded. “Gladly, Mother,” he said quietly.

But to his father he said nothing, and his father said nothing to him.