The Call of Earth: 2 (Homecoming) (33 page)

“I came because of a dream,” said Nafai.

“Ah—
your
dream, or your bride’s?”

“Your
dream, sir.”

Moozh waited, expressionless.

“I believe you dreamed once of a man with a hairy flying creature on his shoulder, and a giant rat clinging to his leg, and men and rats and angels came and worshipped them, all three of them, touching them with . . .”

But Nafai did not go on, for Moozh had risen to his feet and was boring into him with those dangerous, agonizing eyes. “I told this to Plod, and he reported it to the intercessor, and so it was known,” said Moozh. “And the fact that you know it tells me that you have
been in contact with someone from the Imperator’s court. So stop this pretense and tell me the truth!”

“Sir, I don’t know who Plod or the intercessor might be, and your dream wasn’t told to me by anyone from the Imperator’s court. I heard it from the Oversoul. Do you think the Oversoul doesn’t know your dreams?”

Moozh sat back down, but his whole manner had changed. The certainty, the easy confidence was gone.

“Are you the form that God has taken now? Are you the incarnation?”

“Me?” asked Nafai. “You see what I am—I’m a fourteen-year-old boy. Maybe a little big for my age.”

“A little young to be married.”

“But not too young to have spoken to the Oversoul.”

“Many in this city make a career of speaking to the Oversoul. You, however, God apparently answers.”

“There’s nothing mystical about it, sir. The Oversoul is a computer—a powerful one, a self-renewing one. Our ancestors set it in place forty million years ago, when they first reached the planet Harmony as refugees from the destruction of Earth. They genetically altered themselves and all their children—to us, all these generations later—to be responsive, at the deepest levels in the brain, to impulses from the Oversoul. Then they programmed the computer to block us from any train of thought, any plan of action that would lead to high technology or rapid communications or fast transportation, so that the world would remain a vast and unknowable place to us, and wars would remain a local affair.”

“Until me,” said Moozh.

“Your conquests have indeed ranged far beyond the area that the Oversoul would normally allow.”

“Because I am not a slave to God,” said Moozh. “Whatever power God—or, if you’re right, this
computer—whatever power it might have over other men is weaker in me, and I have withstood it and overwhelmed it. I am here today because I am too strong for God.”

“Yes, he told us that you thought so,” said Nafai. “But actually the influence of the Oversoul is even stronger in you than in most people. Probably about as strong as it is in me. If it was appropriate, if you opened yourself to its voice, the Oversoul could talk to you and you wouldn’t need me to tell you what I’m here to tell you about.”

“If the Oversoul told you that it is
stronger
in me than in most people, then your computer is a liar,” said Moozh.

“You have to understand—the Oversoul isn’t really concerned with individual people’s lives, except insofar as it’s been running some kind of breeding program to try to create people like me—and you, of course. I didn’t like it when I learned about it, but it’s the reason I’m alive, or at least the reason my parents were brought together. The Oversoul manipulates people. That’s its job. It has manipulated you almost constantly.”

“I’m aware that it has tried. I call it God, you call it the Oversoul, but it has not controlled me.”

“As soon as it became aware that you intended to resist it, it simply turned things backward,” said Nafai. “Whatever it wanted you to do, it forbade you to do. Then it made sure you remembered to do it and you obeyed almost perfectly.”

“A lie,” whispered Moozh.

It made Nafai afraid, to see how emotions were seizing this man. The general clearly was not accustomed to feelings he could not control; Nafai wondered if perhaps
he ought to let him calm down before proceeding. “Are you all right?” Nafai asked.

“Go on,” said Moozh acidly. “I can hear anything that dead men say.”

That was such a weak thing to say that Nafai was disgusted. “Oh, am I supposed to change my story because you threaten me with death?” he asked. “If I was afraid to die, do you think I would have come here?”

Nafai could see a change come over Moozh. As if he visibly reined himself in. “I apologize,” said Moozh. “For a moment I behaved like the kind of man I most despise. Blustering a threat in order to change the message of a messenger who believes, at least, that he is telling me the truth. But I can assure you, whatever I might feel, if you die today it will not be because of any words you might say. Please go on.”

“You must understand,” said Nafai, “if the Oversoul really wants you to forget something, you
will
forget it. My brother Issib and I thought we were very clever, forcing our way through its barriers. But we didn’t really force it. We simply became more trouble than it was worth to resist us. The Oversoul would rather have us go along with its plans knowingly than to have to control us and manipulate us. That’s why I’m here. Because my wife’s sister saw in a dream how strong your link with the Oversoul is, and how you waste yourself in a vain effort to resist. I came to tell you that the only way to break free of its control is to embrace its plan.”

“The way to win is to surrender?” Moozh asked wryly.

“The way to be
free
is to stop resisting and start talking,” said Nafai. “The Oversoul is the servant of humanity, not its master. It can be persuaded. It will listen. Sometimes it needs our help. General,
we
need you, if you’ll only come with us.”

“Come with you?”

“My father was called out to the desert as the first step in a great journey.”

“Your father was driven out onto the desert by the machinations of Gaballufix. I have spoken with Rashgallivak, and I can’t be deceived.”

“Do you honestly believe that speaking with Rashgallivak is a way to ensure that you
won’t
be deceived?”

“I would know if he lied to me.”

“But what if he believed what he told you, and yet it still wasn’t true?”

Moozh waited, unspeaking.

“I tell you that, regardless of the immediate impetus that caused our departure at a certain hour of a certain day, it was the Oversoul’s purpose to get Father and me and my brothers out into the desert, as the first step to a journey.”

“And yet here you are in the city.”

“I told you,” said Nafai. “I was married last night. So were my brothers.”

“Elemak and Mebbekew and Issib.”

Nafai was surprised and a little frightened that Moozh knew so much about them. But he had set out to tell the truth, and tell it he would. “Issib is with Father. He wanted to come. I wanted him to come. But Elemak wouldn’t have it, and Father went along. We came for wives. And for Father’s wife. When we arrived, Mother laughed and said that she would never go out onto the desert, no matter what mad project Wetchik had in mind. But then you put her under arrest and spread those rumors about her. In effect, you cut her off from Basilica, and now she understands that there’s nothing for her here and so she, too, will go with us into the desert.”

“You’re saying that what I did was all part of the Oversoul’s plan to get your mother to join her husband in a tent?”

“I’m saying that your purposes were bent to serve the Oversoul’s plans. They always will be, General. They always have been.”

“But what if I refuse to allow your mother to leave her house? What if I keep you and your brothers and your wives under arrest here? What if I send soldiers to stop Shedemei from gathering up seeds and embryos for your journey?”

Nafai was stunned. He knew about Shedemei? Impossible—she would never have told anyone. What was this Moozh capable of, if he could come into a strange city and be so aware of things so quickly that he could realize that Shedemei’s gathering of seeds had something to do with Wetchik’s exile?

“You see,” said Moozh. “The Oversoul does not have power where
I
rule.”

“You can keep us under arrest,” said Nafai. “But when the Oversoul determines that it’s time for us to go, you will find that you have a compelling reason to let us go, and so you’ll let us go.”

“If the Oversoul wants you to go, my boy, you may be sure that you will
not
go.”

“You don’t understand. I haven’t told you the most important part. Whatever this war is that you think you’re having with whatever version of the Oversoul it is that you call God, what matters is that dream you had. Of the flying beasts, and the giant rats.”

Moozh waited, but again Nafai could see that he was deeply disturbed.

“The Oversoul didn’t send that dream. The Oversoul didn’t understand it.”

“So. Then it was a meaningless dream, a common sleeping dream.”

“Not at all. Because my wife also dreamed of those same creatures, and so did her sister. All three of you, and these were not common dreams. They felt important to all of you. You knew that they had a meaning. Yet they didn’t come from the Oversoul.”

Again Moozh waited.

“It has been forty million years since human beings abandoned the Earth they had almost completely destroyed,” said Nafai. “There has been time enough for Earth to heal itself. For there to be life there again. For there to be a place for humankind. Many species were lost—that’s why Shedemei is gathering seeds and embryos for our journey. We are the ones that have the gift of speaking easily with the Oversoul. We are the ones who have been gathered together, here in Basilica, this day, this hour, so that we can go forth on a journey that will lead us back to Earth.”

“Apart from the fact that Earth, if it exists, is a planet orbiting a faraway star, to which even birds can’t fly,” said Moozh, “you have still said nothing about what this journey might have to do with my dream.”

“We don’t
know
this,” said Nafai. “We only guess it, but the Oversoul also thinks it might be true. Somehow the Keeper of Earth is calling us. Across all the lightyears between us and Earth, it has reached out to us and it’s calling us back. For all we know, it even altered the programming of the Oversoul itself, telling it to gather us together. The Oversoul thought it knew why it was doing this, but it only recently learned the real reason. Just as you are only now learning the real reason for everything you’ve done in your life.”

“A message in a dream, and it comes from someone thousands of lightyears away from here? Then the
dream must have been sent thirty generations before I was born. Don’t make me laugh, Nafai. You’re far too bright to believe this. Doesn’t it occur to you that maybe the Oversoul is manipulating
you?”

Nafai considered this. “The Oversoul doesn’t lie to me,” he said.

“Yet you say that it has lied to me all along. So we can’t pretend that the Oversoul is rigidly committed to truthfulness, can we?”

“But it doesn’t lie to
me.”

“How do you know?” asked Moozh.

“Because what it tells me . . .
feels
right.”

“If it can make
me
forget things—and it can, it’s happened so many times that...” His voice petered out as Moozh apparently decided not to delve into those memories. “If it can do
that,
why can’t it also make
you,
as you say, ’feel right’?”

Nafai had no ready answer. He had not questioned his own certainty, and so he didn’t know why Moozh’s reasoning was false. “It’s not just me,” said Nafai, struggling to find a reason. “My wife also trusts the Oversoul. And her sister, too. They’ve had dreams and visions all their lives, and the Oversoul has never lied to them.”

“Dreams and visions all their lives?” Moozh leaned forward on the table. “Whom, exactly, did you marry?”

“I thought I told you,” said Nafai. “Luet. She’s one of my mother’s nieces in her teaching house.”

“The waterseer,” said Moozh.

“I’m not surprised that you’ve heard of her.”

“She’s thirteen years old,” said Moozh.

“Too young, I know. But she was willing to do what the Oversoul asked of her, as was I.”

“You think you’re going to be able to take the waterseer away from Basilica on some insane journey into the desert in order to find an ancient legendary planet?”
asked Moozh. “Even if
I
did nothing to stop you, do you think the people of this city would stand for it?”

“They will if the Oversoul helps us, and the Oversoul
will
help us.”

“And your wife’s sister, which of your brothers did
she
marry? Elemak?”

“She’s going to marry Issib. He’s waiting for us at my father’s tent.”

Moozh leaned back in his chair and chuckled merrily. “It’s hard to see who has been controlling whom,” he said. “According to
you,
the Oversoul has a whole set of plans that I’m a small part of. But the way it looks to me, God is setting things up so that everything plays into my hands. I thought before you came in here that it looked as though God had finally stopped being my enemy.”

“The Oversoul was never your enemy,” said Nafai. “It was
your
decision to make a contest of it.”

Moozh got up from the table, walked around it, sat down beside Nafai, and took him by the hand. “My boy, this has been the most remarkable conversation of my life.”

Mine, too, thought Nafai, but he was too astonished to say anything.

“I’m sure you’re very earnest about your desire to make this journey, but I can assure you that you’ve been seriously misled. You’re not leaving this city, and neither is your wife or her sister, and neither are any of the other people you plan to take along. You’ll realize that sooner or later. If you realize it sooner—if you realize it
now
—then I have another plan for you that I think you’ll like a little better than puttering around among the rocks and scorpions and sleeping in a tent.”

Again, Nafai wanted to be able to explain to him why he
wanted
to follow the Oversoul. Why he knew that he was freely following the Oversoul, and perhaps the
Keeper of Earth as well. Why he knew that the Oversoul wasn’t lying to him or manipulating him or controlling him. But because he couldn’t find the words or even the reasons, he remained silent.