The Call of Earth: 2 (Homecoming) (30 page)

She awoke with the sound of her own scream in her ears, and an unsoothable fear clawing at her heart. She was drenched in sweat, and the night was dark around her, the breeze chilling her, but her trembling was not from cold. She threw off the carpet that covered her and ran, stumbling, still half-blind from the sleep in her eyes and awkward from the stiffness of uncomfortable rest, to the gap in the gable that led her into an attic of the house.

By the time she got to her own room, she could see well enough, and walked smoothly and quietly, but she was still weak and terrified, and she could not bear the thought of being alone. For there was Luet’s bed— Luet, who should be there to soothe her now—but it was empty, because Luet had gone to another bed, and held someone who needed her far less than Hushidh did tonight. Hushidh huddled on her own bed, alternating between silent trembling and great, gasping sobs, until she feared that someone in another room might hear her.

They’ll think I’m jealous of Luet, if they hear me weeping. They’ll think I hate her for marrying before me, and that isn’t so .. . not now, anyway, not since the Oversoul showed me the meaning of it all. She tried to bring that dream back into her memory—of herself and her children and her husband at the door of the tent— but the moment she did, it transformed again and she was possessed by the terror of the rats coming out of their holes, out of the trees, and her only hope the desperate strangeness of the flying beasts—

And she found herself in the corridor outside her
room, running away from a fear that she carried with her as she ran. Ran and ran until she hurled open the door to the room where she knew that Luet would be, for she couldn’t bear this, she had to have help, and it could only be Luet, only Luet could help her ...

“What is it?” The fear in Luet’s voice was an echo of the terror in Hushidh’s own. Hushidh saw her sister, sitting bolt upright on the bed, holding a sheet up to her throat as if it were a shield. And then Nafai, awakened more by her voice than by the door, sleepily rising from the bed, standing on the floor, coming toward Hushidh, not yet understanding who it was but knowing that if an intruder came it was his job to block the way . . .

“Shuya,” said Luet.

“Oh, Luet, forgive me,” Hushidh sobbed. “Help me. Hold me!”

Before Luet could reach her, Nafai was there, helping her, leading her into the room from the doorway. Then Luet was with her and brought her to sit on the rumpled bed, and now Hushidh could let out her sobs as her sister held her. She was vaguely aware of Nafai moving through the room; he closed the door, then found clothing enough for himself and Luet that they didn’t need to be embarrassed when Hushidh stopped crying and came to herself.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Hushidh said again and again as she wept.

“No, please, it’s all right,” said Luet.

“Your wedding night, I never would have . . . but I dreamed, it was so terrible—”

“It’s all right, Shuya,” said Nafai. “Only I wish you could cry a little softer, because if anybody hears you they’re going to think it’s Luet sobbing her heart out on her wedding night and then who knows what they’ll
think of me.” He paused. “Of course, come to think of it, maybe you should cry a little louder.”

There was laughter and calm in Nafai’s voice, and Luet also laughed a little at his jest. It was what Hushidh needed, to take away her terror: She could think of Luet and Nafai instead of her dream.

“No one has ever done anything as wretched as this,” said Hushidh, miserable and ashamed and yet so deeply relieved. “Bursting in on my own sister’s wedding night.”

“It’s not as if you interrupted anything,” said Nafai, and then he and Luet both burst into laughter—no,
giggling
was what it was. Like little children with a ridiculous secret.

“I’m sorry to laugh when you’re so unhappy,” said Luet, “but you have to understand. We were both so bad at it.” They both burst into giggles again.

“It’s an acquired skill,” said Nafai. “Which we haven’t acquired.”

Hushidh felt herself enfolded by their laughter, included in the calm that they created between them. It was unthinkable, that a young husband and his bride, interrupted in their first night together, should so willingly include and comfort an intruding sister; yet that was who they were, Lutya and her Nyef. She felt herself filled with love and gratitude for them, and it spilled out in tears, but glad ones, not the desperate tears born of loneliness and terror in the night.

“I wasn’t weeping for myself,” she said—for now she could speak. “I
was
jealous and lonely, I admit it, but the Oversoul sent me a kind dream, a good one, and it showed me and . . . my husband, and our children ...” Then she had a thought that had not occurred to her before. “Nafai, I know that I am meant for Issib. But I have to ask—he
is
... capable, isn’t he?”

“Shuya, he could hardly be
less
capable than I was tonight.”

Luet playfully slapped at Nafai’s hand. “She’s asking a real question, Nafai.”

“He’s as much a virgin as I am,” said Nafai, “and away from the city he has scant use of his hands. But he isn’t paralyzed, and his . . . involuntary responses, well,
respond”

“Then the dream
was
true,” said Hushidh. “Or it can be, anyway. I dreamed of my children. With Issib. That could be true, couldn’t it?”

“If you want it to be,” said Nafai. “If you’re willing to accept him. He’s the best of us, Shuya, I promise you that. The smartest and the kindest and the wisest.”

“You didn’t tell me that,” said Luet. “You told me
you
were the best.”

Nafai only grinned at her with stupid joy.

Hushidh felt better now, and also knew that it wasn’t right for her to remain between them like this; she had received all that she could hope for from her sister, and now she could return to her room and sleep alone. The shadow of the evil dream had passed from her. “Thank you both,” she whispered. “I will never forget how kind you were to me tonight.” And she arose from the edge of the bed and started for the door.

“Don’t go,” said Nafai.

“I must sleep now,” said Hushidh.

“Not until you tell us your dream,” he said. “We need to hear it. Not the sweet dream, but the one that made you so afraid.”

“He’s right,” said Luet. “It may be our wedding night, but the whole world is dark around us and we must know everything the Oversoul says to any of us.”

“In the morning,” said Hushidh.

“Do you think that we can sleep, wondering what
terrible dream could strike so hard at our sister?” said Nafai.

Even though Hushidh knew how carefully he had chosen his words, she was grateful for the good and loving impulse behind them. In his heart he might very well fear or resent her close connection with his new wife, but instead of trying to resist that closeness or drive them apart, Nafai was deliberately working to include himself in their sisterhood, and include Hushidh in the closeness of their marriage. It was a generous thing to do, on this night of all nights, when it must have seemed to him that his worst fears about Hushidh were true, what with her plunging into their bridal chamber sobbing her eyes out in the middle of the night! If he was willing to try so hard, could she do any less than accept the relationship he wanted to create? She was a raveler, after all. She knew about binding people together, and was glad to help him tie this knot.

So she came back and they sat together on the bed, making a triangle with their crossed legs, knee to knee, as she told her dreams, from beginning to end. She spared herself nothing, confessing her own resentments at the beginning so that they could understand how glad she was for the Oversoul’s assurances.

Twice they interrupted her with their astonishment. The first time was when she told of seeing Moozh, and how the Oversoul was ruling him through his very rejection of her. Nafai laughed in wonderment. “Moozh himself—the bloody-handed general of the Gorayni, running away from the Oversoul into the very path the Oversoul laid out for him. Who could have guessed it!”

The second time was when Hushidh told of the winged beasts that caught her and Issib as they fell. “Angels!” cried Luet.

At once Hushidh remembered the dream that Luet
had told her days before. “Of course,” Hushidh said. “That’s why they came into my dream—because I remembered your telling me about those angels and the giant rats.”

“Don’t reach conclusions now,” said Luet. “Tell us the rest of the dream.”

So she did, and when it was done, they sat in silence, thinking for a while.

“The first dream, of you and Issib, I think that was from yourself,” said Luet at last.

“I think so, too,” said Hushidh, “and now that I remember your telling me that dream of hairy angels ...”

“Quiet,” said Luet. “Don’t get ahead of the dream. After that first vision that came from your fears about marrying Issib, you begged the Oversoul to tell you her purpose, and she showed you that wonderful dream of the gold and silver cords binding people together—”

“Breeding us like cattle,” said Nafai.

“Don’t be irreverent,” said Luet.

“Don’t be too reverent,” said Nafai. “I sincerely doubt that the Oversoul’s original programming told it to start a breeding program among the humans of Harmony.”

“I know that you’re right,” said Luet, “that the Oversoul is a computer established at the dawn of our world to watch over human beings and keep us from destroying ourselves, but still in my heart I feel the Oversoul as a woman, as the Mother of the Lake.”

“Woman or machine, it’s developed purposes of its own, and I’m not comfortable with this one,” said Nafai. “Bringing us together to make a journey to Earth, I accept that, I’m glad of it—it’s a glorious undertaking. But this breeding thing. My mother and father, coupling like a ewe and a ram brought together to keep the bloodlines pure ...”

“They still love each other,” said Luet.

He reached out a hand to her and cupped her fingers gently in his. “Lutya, they
do
, as we will love each other. But what we’ve done, we’ve done willingly, knowing the Oversoul’s purpose and consenting to it, or so we thought. What other plots and plans does the Oversoul have in mind for us, which we’ll only discover later?”

“The Oversoul told me this because I asked,” said Hushidh. “If she
is
a computer, as you say—and I believe you, I really do—then perhaps she simply can’t tell us what we haven’t yet asked to know.”

“Then we must ask. We must know
exactly
what she—what
he
—what
it
is planning,” said Nafai.

Luet smiled at his confusion but did not laugh. Hushidh was not his loyal wife; she could not suppress a small hoot.

“However we think of the Oversoul,” Nafai said patiently, “we have to ask. What it means for Moozh to be here, for instance. Are we supposed to try to bring him out into the desert, too? Is that why the Oversoul brought him here? And these strange creatures, these angels and rats—what do they mean? The Oversoul has to tell us.”

“I still think the rats and angels came because Lutya dreamed them and told me about them and there they were, ready to give a face to my fears,” said Hushidh.

“But why did they come into Lutya’s dream?” asked Nafai. “
She
didn’t fear them.”

“And the rats weren’t terrible or dangerous in my dream,” said Luet. “They were just—themselves. Living their lives. They had nothing to do with human beings in my dream.”

“Let’s stop guessing,” said Nafai, “and ask the Oversoul.”

They had never done this before. Men and women did not pray together in the rituals of Basilica—the men prayed with blood and water in their temple, or in their private places, and the women prayed in water at the lake, or in
their
private places. So they were shy and uncertain. Nafai impulsively reached out his hands to Hushidh and Luet, and they took his hands and joined to each other as well.

“I speak to the Oversoul silently,” said Nafai. “In my mind.”

“I, too,” said Luet, “but sometimes aloud, don’t
you?”

“The same with me,” said Hushidh. “Luet, speak for us all.”

Luet shook her head. “It was you who saw the dream tonight, Hushidh. It was you the Oversoul was speaking to.”

Hushidh shuddered in spite of herself. “What if the bad dream comes back to me?”

“What does it matter which of us speaks?” said Nafai, “as long as we ask the same questions in our hearts? Father and Issib and I speak to the Oversoul easily, when we have the Index with us, asking questions and getting answers as if we spoke with the computer at school. We’ll do the same here.”

“We don’t have the Index,” Luet pointed out.

“No, but we are bound to the Oversoul with threads of gold and silver,” said Nafai, glancing at Hushidh. “That should be enough, shouldn’t it?”

“Speak for us then, Luet,” said Hushidh.

So Luet spoke their questions, and then spoke aloud her own worries, and those Nafai had expressed, and the terror Hushidh had experienced. It was to that question that the first answer came.

I don’t know, said the Oversoul.

Luet fell silent, startled.

“Did you hear what I heard?” asked Nafai.

Since no one knew what Nafai had heard, no one could answer. Until Hushidh dared to say the thing
she
had heard inside her mind. “She doesn’t know,” whispered Hushidh.

Nafai gripped their hands tighter, and spoke to the Oversoul, his voice now and not Luet’s speaking for them all. “What don’t you know?”

I sent the dream of the gold and silver threads, said the Oversoul. I sent the dream of Issib and the children at the door of the tent. But I never meant you to see the general. I never showed you the general.

“And the ... the rats?” asked Hushidh.

“And the angels?” asked Luet.

I don’t know where they came from or what they mean.

“So,” said Hushidh. “It was just a strange chance dream in your mind, Luet. And then because you told your dream it became a memory in
my
mind, and that’s it.”

No!