The Crystal City

Nueva Barcelona

It seemed like everybody and his brother was in Nueva Barcelona these days. It was steamboats, mostly, that brought them. Even though the fog on the Mizzippy made it so a white man couldn’t cross the river to the west bank, the steamboats could make the trip up and down the channel, carrying goods and passengers-which was the same as saying they carried money and laid it into the laps of whoever happened to be running things at the river’s mouth.
These days that meant the Spanish, officially, anyway. They owned Nueva Barcelona and it had their troops all over it.
But the very presence of those troops said something. One thing it said was that the Spanish weren’t so sure they could hold on to the city. Wasn’t that many years since the place was called New Orleans and there was still plenty of places in the city where you better speak French or you couldn’t find a bite to eat or a place to sleep—and if you spoke Spanish there, you might just wake up with your throat slit.
It didn’t surprise Alvin much to hear Spanish and French mingling on the docks. What surprised him was that practically everybody was talking English—usually with heavy accents, but it was English, all the same.
“Guess you learnt all that Spanish for nothing, Arthur Stuart,” said Alvin to the half-black boy who was pretending to be his slave.
“Maybe so, maybe not,” said Arthur Stuart. “Not like it cost me nothing to learn it.”
Which was true. It had been disconcerting to Alvin to realize how easily the boy had picked up Spanish from a Cuban slave onthe steamboat that brought them downriver. It was a good knack to have, and Alvin didn’t have it himself, not a lick. Being a maker was good, but it wasn’t everything. Not that Alvin needed reminding of that. There were days when he thought being a maker wasn’t worth a wad of chawn to-backey on the parlor floor. With all his power, he hadn’t been able to save the life of his baby, had he? Oh, he tried, but when it was born a couple of months too soon, he couldn’t figure out how to fix its lungs from the inside so it could breathe. Turned blue and died without ever drawing air into it. No, being a maker wasn’t worth that much.
Now Margaret was pregnant again, but neither she nor Alvin saw much of each other these days. Her so busy trying to prevent a bloody war over slavery. Him so busy trying to figure out what he was supposed to do with his life. Nothing he’d ever tried to do had worked out too well. And this trip to Nueva Barcelona was gonna end up just as pointless, he was sure of it.
Only good thing about it was running into Abe and Coz on the journey. But now they were in Barcy, he’d lose track of them and it’d just be him and Arthur Stuart, continuing in their long term project of showing that you can have all the power in the world, but it wasn’t worth much if you was too dumb to figure out what to do with it or how to share it with anybody else.
“You got that look again, Alvin,” said Arthur Stuart.
“What look is that?”
“Like you need to piss but you’re afraid it’s gonna come out in chunks.”
Alvin slapped him lightly upside his head. “You can’t talk that way to me in this town.”
“Nobody heard me.”
“They don’t have to hear you to see your attitude,” said Alvin. “Cocky as a squirrel. Look around you—you see any black folks actin’ like that?”
“I’m only half black.”
“You only got to be one-sixteenth black to be black in this town.”
“Dang it, Alvin, how do any of these folks know they ain’t one-sixteenth black? Nobody knows their great-great-grandparents.”
“What do you want to bet all the white folks in Barcy can recite their ancestry back all the way?”
“What do you want to bet they made up most of it?”
“Act like you’re afraid I’ll whip you, Arthur Stuart.”
“Why should I, when you never act like you’re gonna?”
Now, that was a challenge, and Alvin took it up. He meant just to pretend to be mad, just a kind of roar and raise up his hand and that’s that. Only when he did it, there was more in that roar than he meant to put there. And the anger was real and strong and he had to force himself not to lash out at the boy.
It was all so real that Arthur Stuart get a look of genuine fear in his eyes, and he really did cower under the threatened blow.
But Alvin got control of himself and the blow didn’t fall.
“You did a pretty good job of looking scared,” said Alvin, laughing nervously.
“I wasn’t acting,” said Arthur Stuart softly. “Were you?”
“Am I that good at it you have to ask?”
“No. You’re a pretty bad liar, most times. You was mad.”
“Yep, I was. But not at you, Arthur Stuart.”
“At who, then?”
“Tell you the truth, I don’t know. Didn’t even know I was mad, till I started trying to mime it.”
At that moment, a large hand took a hold of Alvin’s shoulder—not a harsh grip, but a strong one all the same. Not many men had hands so big they could hold a blacksmith’s shoulder afore and behind.
“Abe,” said Alvin.
“I was just wonderin’ what I just saw here,” said Abe. “I look over at my two friends pretendin’ to be master and slave, and what do I see?”
“Oh, he beats me all the time,” said Arthur Stuart, “when no one’s looking.”
“I reckon I might have to start,” said Alvin, “just so’s you won’t be such a liar.”
“So it was playacting?” asked Abe.
It shamed Alvin to have this good man even wonder, specially after spending a week together going down the Mizzippy. And maybe some of that pent-up anger was still close to the surface, because he found himself answering right sharp. “Not only was it playacting,” said Alvin, “but it was also our business.”
“And none of mine?” said Abe. “Reckon so. None of my business when one of my friends reaches out to strike another. Guess a good man’s gotta just stand by and watch.”
“Didn’t hit him,” said Alvin. “Wasn’t going to.”
“But now you want to hit me,” said Abe.
“No,” said Alvin. “Now I want to go find me a cheap inn and put up my poke afore we find something to eat. I hear Barcy’s a good town for eatin’, as long as you don’t mind having fish that looks like bugs.”
“Was that an invitation to a meal?” said Abe. “Or an invitation to go away and let you get about your business?”
“Mostly it was an invitation to change the subject,” said Alvin. “Though I’d be glad to have you and Coz dine with us at whatever fine establishment we locate.”
“Oh, Coz won’t be joinin’ us. Coz just found the love of his life, a-waitin’ for him right on the pier.”
“You mean that trashy lady he was a-talkin’ to?” asked Arthur Stuart.
“I suggested to him that he might hold out for a cleaner grade of whore,” said Abe, “but he denied that she was one, and she agreed that she had plain fallen in love with him the moment she saw him. So I figger I’ll see Coz sometime tomorrow morning, drunk and robbed.”
“Glad to know he’s got you to look out for him, Abe,” said Alvin.
“But I did,” said Abe. He held up a wallet. “I picked his pocket first, so he’s got no more than three dollars left on him for her to rob.”
Alvin and Arthur both laughed at that.
“Is that your knack?” asked Arthur Stuart. “Pickin’ pockets?”
“No sir,” said Lincoln. “It don’t take no knack to rob Coz. He wouldn’t notice if you picked his nose. Not if there was a girl making big-eyes at him.”
“But the girl would notice,” said Alvin.
“Mebbe, but she didn’t say nothing.”
“And since she was planning on getting what was in that wallet herself,” said Alvin, “seeing as how you two already sold your whole cargo and she no doubt saw you get the money and divvy it up, don’t you think she would have said something?”
“So I reckon she didn’t see me.”
“Or she did but didn’t care.”
Abe thought about that for a second. “I reckon what you’re saying is I oughta look inside this-here wallet.”
“You could do that,” said Alvin.
Abe opened it up. “I’m jiggered,” he said. Of course it was empty.
“You’re jug-eared, too,” said Alvin, “but your real friends would never point that out.”
“So she already got him.”.
“Oh, I don’t suppose she ever laid a hand on him,” said Alvin. “But a girl like that, she probably doesn’t work alone. She makes big-eyes…”
“And her partner goes for the pockets,” said Arthur Stuart.
“You sound experienced,” said Abe.
“We watch for it,” said Arthur Stuart. “We both kind of like to catch ’em at it, iffen we can.”
“So why didn’t you catch them robbin’ Coz?”
“We didn’t know you needed lookin’ after,” said Arthur Stuart.
Abe looked at him with calculated indignation. “Next time you go to beatin’ this boy, Al Smith, would you be so kind as to lay down one extra wallop on my behalf?”
“Get your own half-black adopted brother-in-law to beat,” said Alvin.
“Besides,” said Arthur Stuart, “you do need looking’ after.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Because you still haven’t thought about how Coz wasn’t the only one distracted by her big fluttery eyes.”
Abe slapped at his jacket pocket. For a moment he was relieved to find his wallet still there. But then he realized that Coz’s wallet had been there, too. It took only a moment to discover that he and Coz had both been robbed.
“And they had the sass to put the wallets back,” said Abe, sounding awestruck.
“Well, don’t feel bad,” said Arthur Stuart. “It was probably the pickpocket’s knack, so what could you do about it?”
Abe sat himself right down on the dock, which was quite an operation, seeing how he was so tall and bony that just getting himself into a sitting position involved nearly knocking three or four people into the water.
“Well, ain’t this a grand holiday,” said Abe. “Ain’t I just the biggest rube you ever saw. First I made a raft that can’t be steered, so you had to save me. And then when I sell my cargo and make the money I came for, I let somebody take it away from us first thing.”
“So,” said Alvin, “let’s go eat.”
“How?” said Abe. “I haven’t got a penny. I haven’t even got a return passage.”
“Oh, we’ll treat you to supper,” said Alvin.
“I can’t let you do that,” said Abe.
“Why not?”
“Because then I’d be in your debt.”
“We saved your stupid life on the river, Abe Lincoln,” said Alvin. “You’re already so far in my debt that you owe me interest on your breath.”
Abe thought about that for a moment. “Well, then, I reckon it’s in for a penny, in for a pound.”
“The American version of that is ‘in for a dime, in for a dollar,’” said Arthur Stuart helpfully.
“But my mama’s version was the one I said,” retorted Abe. “And since I got exactly as many pennies and pounds as I got dimes and dollars, I reckon I can please myself which ones to cuss with.”
“You mean that was cussin’?” said Arthur Stuart.
“Inside me there was cussin’ so bad it’d make a sailor poke sticks in his own ears to keep from hearin’ it,” said Abe. “Pennies and pounds was just the part I let out.”
All this while, of course, Alvin had been using his doodlebug to go in search of the thieves. First thing was to find Coz, partly because the woman might still be with him, and partly to make sure he hadn’t been harmed. Alvin found his heartfire just as he was getting clubbed in the head in a back alley. It wasn’t no hard thing to make it so the club didn’t do him much harm. Put him down on the ground convincingly enough, so they wouldn’t feel no need to give him another lick with it, but Coz’d wake up without so much as a headache.
Meanwhile, though, the woman and the man was strolling off as easy as you please. So Alvin searched them with his doodlebug and found the money fast enough. It was no great difficulty to make the man’s pocket and the woman’s bag unweave themselves a little, and it wasn’t much harder to make the gold coins all slippery. Nor was it so hard to keep them from making a single sound when they hit the wharf. The tricky thing was to keep the coins from slipping through the cracks between the planks and falling into the slack water under the dock.
Arthur Stuart, of course, had enough experience and training now that he was able to follow pretty much what Alvin was doing. That was why he was stringing out the conversation long enough to give Alvin time to get the job done.
In a way, thought Alvin, we’re just like that pair of thieves. Arthur Stuart’s the stall, keeping Abe busy so he doesn’t have a clue what’s going on, and I’m the cutpurse and pickpocket. Only difference is, we’re sort of unstealing what was already stolen.
“Let’s go eat, then,” said Arthur Stuart, “instead of talking about eatin’.”
“Where shall we go to find food that we can stand to eat?” said Alvin.
“This way, I think,” said Arthur Stuart, heading directly toward the alleyway where the coins had all been spilled.
“Oh, that doesn’t look too promising,” said Abe.
“Trust me,” said Arthur Stuart. “I got a nose for good food.”
“He does,” said Alvin. “And I got the tongue and lips and teeth for it.”
“I’ll happily provide the belly,” offered Abe.
They had him lead the way down the alley. And blamed if he didn’t just walk right past the money.
“Abe,” said Alvin. “Didn’t you see them gold coins a-lyin’ there?”
“They ain’t mine,” said Abe.
“Finders keepers, losers weepers,” said Arthur Stuart.
“I may be a loser,” said Abe, “but I ain’t weepin’”
“But you’re a finder now,” said Arthur Stuart, “and I don’t see you doin’ no keepin’.”
Abe looked at them a bit askance. “I reckon we ought to pick up these coins and search out their proin. “Why don’t you put it into those empty wallets you got?”
Alvin fully expected that Abe would realize, when he started loading it in, that it was exactly the amount that had been stolen.
But he didn’t. Because the money didn’t fit. There was too blamed much of it.
Arthur Stuart started laughing and kept laughing till he had tears running down his cheeks.
“So now who’s the weeper?” said Abe.
“He’s laughing at me,” said Alvin.
“Why?”
“Because I clean forgot that you and Coz probably wasn’t the first folks they robbed today.”
Abe looked down at the full wallets and the coins that Alvin and Arthur Stuart were still holding and it finally dawned on him. “You robbed the robbers.”
Alvin shook his head. “You was supposed to think they just dropped your money and ran or something,” he said. “But I can’t pretend that when you go finding more money than they took.”
Abe shook his head. “Well, I’m beginning to get the idea that you got you some kind of knack, Mr. Smith.”
“I just know how to work with metals some,” said Alvin.
“Including metal that’s in somebody else’s pocket or purse some six rods off.”
“Let’s go find Coz,” said Alvin. “Since I reckon he’s due to wake up soon.”
“He’s sleeping?” asked Abe.
“He had some encouragement,” said Alvin. “But he’ll be fine.”
Abe gave him a look but said nothing.
“What about all this extra money?” asked Arthur Stuart.
“I’m not taking it,” said Abe. “I’ll keep what’s rightfully mine and Coz’s, but the rest you can just leave there on the planks. Let the thieves come back and find it.”
“But it wasn’t theirs, neither,” said Arthur Stuart.
“That’s between them and their maker on Judgment Day,” said Abe. “I ain’t gettin’ involved. I don’t want to have any money I can’t account for.”
“To the Lord?” asked Alvin.
“Or to the magistrate,” said Abe. “I gave a receipt for this amount, and it can be proved that it’s mine. Just drop the rest of that. Or keep it, if you don’t mind being thieves yourselves.”
Alvin couldn’t believe that the man whose money he had just saved was calling him a thief. But after he thought about it for a moment, he realized that he couldn’t very well pretend that he simply happened to find the money. Nor that it belonged to him by any stretch of the imagination.
“I expect if you rob a robber,” said Alvin, “it doesn’t make you any less of a robber.”
“I expect not,” said Abe.
Alvin and Arthur Stuart let the money dribble out of their hands and back down onto the planks. Once again, Alvin made sure that none of it fell through the cracks. Money wouldn’t do no good to anybody down in the water.
“You always this honest?” said Alvin.
“About money, yes sir,” said Abe.
“But not about everything.”
“I have to admit that there’s parts of some stories I tell that aren’t strictly speaking the absolute God’s-own truth.”
“Well, no, of course not,” said Alvin, “but you can’t tell a good story without improving it here and there.”
“Well, you can,” said Abe. “But then what do you do when you need to tell the same story to the same people? You gotta change it then, so it’ll still be entertaining.”
“So it’s really for their benefit to fiddle with the truth.”
“Pure Christian charity.”
Coz was still asleep when they found him, but it wasn’t the sleep of the newly knocked-upside-the-head, it was a snorish sleep of a weary man. So Abe paused a moment to put a finger to his lips, to let Alvin and Arthur Stuart know that they should let him do the talking. Only when they nodded did he start nudging Coz with his toe.
Coz sputtered and awoke. “Oh, man,” he said. “What am I doing here?”
“Waking up,” said Abe. “But a minute ago, you was sleeping.”
“I was? Why was I sleeping here?”
“I was going to ask you the same question,” said Abe. “Did you have a good time with that lady you fell so much in love with?”
Coz started to brag. “Oh, you bet I did.” Only they could all see from his face that he actually had no memory of what might have happened. “It was amazing. She was—only maybe I shouldn’t tell you all about it in front of the boy.”
“No, best not,” said Abe. “You must have got powerful drunk last night.”
“Last night?” asked Coz, looking around.
“It’s been a whole night and a day since you took off with her. I reckon you probably spent every dime of your half of the money. But I’m a-tellin’ you, Coz, I’m not giving you any of my half, I’m just not.”
Coz patted himself and realized his wallet was missing. “Oh, that snickety-pickle. That blimmety-blam.”
“Coz has him a knack for swearing in front of children,” said Abe.
“My wallet’s gone,” he said.
“I reckon that includes the money in it,” said Abe.
“Well she wouldn’t steal the wallet and leave the money, would she?” said Coz.
“So you’re sure she stole it?” said Abe.
“Well how else would my wallet turn up missing?” said Coz.
“You spent a whole night and day carousing. How do you know you didn’t spend it all? Or give it to her as a present? Or make six more friends and buy them drinks till you ran out of money, and then you traded the wallet for one last drink?”
Coz looked like he’d been kicked in the belly, he was so stunned and forlorn. “Do you think I did, Abe? I got to admit, I have no memory of what I did last night.”
Then he reached up and touched his head. “I must have slept my way clear past the hangover.”
“You don’t look too steady,” said Abe. “Maybe you don’t have a hangover cause you’re still drunk.”
“I am a little wobbly,” said Coz. “Tell me, the three of you, am I talking slurry? Do I sound drunk?”
Alvin shrugged. “Maybe you sound like a man as just woke up.”
“Kind of a frog in your throat,” said Arthur Stuart.
“I’ve seen you drunker,” said Abe.
“Oh, I’m never gonna live down the shame of this, Abe,” said Coz. “You warned me not to go off with her. And whether she robbed me or somebody else did or I spent it all or I clean lost it from being so stupid drunk, I’m going home empty-handed and Ma’11 kill me, she’ll just ream me out a new ear, she’ll cuss me up so bad.”
“Oh, Coz, you know I won’t leave you in such a bad way,” said Abe.
“Won’t you? You mean it? You’ll give me a share of your half?”
“Enough to be respectable,” said Abe. “We’ll just say you…invested the rest of it, on speculation, kind of, but it went bad. They’ll believe that, right? That’s better than getting robbed or spending it on likker.”
“Oh, it is, Abe. You’re a saint. You’re my best friend. And you won’t have to lie for me, Abe. I know you hate to lie, so you just tell folks to ask me and I&#arted getting to him. “Every coin I take is taken from you, Abe. I can’t do this. You decide how much you can spare for me.”
“No, you do the calculatin’,” said Abe. “You know I’m no good at accounts, or my store wouldn’t have gone bust the way it did last year.”
“But I feel like I’m robbing you, taking money out of your wallet like this.”
“Oh, that ain’t my wallet,” said Abe.
Coz looked at him like he was crazy. “You took it out of your own pocket,” he said. “And if it ain’t yours, then whose is it?”
When Abe didn’t answer, Coz looked at the wallet again.
“It’s mine,” he said.
“It does look like yours,” said Abe.
“You took it out of my own pocket when I was sleeping!” said Coz, outraged.
“I can tell you honestly that I did not,” said Abe. “And these gentlemen can affirm that I did not touch you with more than the toe of my boot as you laid there snoring like a choir of angels.”
“Then how’d you get it?”
“I stole it from you before you even went off with that girl,” said Abe.
“You…but then…then how could I have done all those things last night?”
“Last night?” said Abe. “As I recall, last night you were on the boat with us.”
“What’re you…” And then it all came clear. “You dad-blasted gummer-huggit! You flim-jiggy swip-swapp!”
Abe put a hand to his ear. “Hark! The song of the chuckleheaded Coz-bird!”
“It’s the same day! I wasn’t asleep half an hour!”
“Twenty minutes,” offered Alvin. “At least that’s my guess.”
“And this is all my own money!” Coz said.
Abe nodded gravely. “It is, my friend, at least until another girl makes big-eyes at you.”
Coz looked up and down the little alleyway. “But what happened to Fannie? One minute I was walking down this alleyway with my hand on her…hand, and the next minute you’re poking’ me with your toe.”
“You know something, Coz?” said Abe. “You don’t have much of a love life.”
“Look who’s talking’,” said Coz sullenly.
But that seemed to be something of a sore spot with Abe, for though the smile didn’t leave his face, the mirth did, and instead of coming back with some jest or jape, he sort of seemed to wander off inside himself somewhere.
“Come on, let’s eat,” said Arthur Stuart. “All this talking’ don’t fill me up much.”
And that being the most honest and sensible thing that had been said that half hour, they all agreed to it and followed their noses till they found a place that sold food that was mostly dead, didn’t have too many legs, wasn’t poisonous when alive, and seemed cooked enough to eat. Not an easy search in Barcy.
After dinner, Coz got him out a pipe which he proceeded to stuff with manure, or so it smelled when he got the thing alight. Alvin toyed with putting out the fire, but he knew he wasn’t given his makery gift just to spare himself the occasional stink.
Instead he took his leave, hoisted his poke onto his shoulder, made sure Arthur Stuart unwound himself from his chair before standing up, and the two lit out in search of a place to stay. None of the miserable fleabitten overpriced understaffed crowded smelly firetraps near the river. Alvin had no idea how long he’d be staying and he only had limited funds, so he’d want a room in a boarding house somewhere in the part of Barcy where decent people lived who aimed to stay a spell. Where a journeyman smith might stay, for instance, while he searched for a shop as needed an extra pair of arms.
He wasn’t thirty steps out of the tavern where they’d dined afore he realized that Abe Lincoln was a-following, and even though Abe had even longer legs than Alvin’s, there was no point in making him hasten to catch them up. He stopped, he turned, and only then did he realize that Arthur Stuart wasn’t walking with him, he was with Abe.
It was disconcerting, how Arthur had learnt a way to keep Alvin from noticing his heartfire. Not that Alvin ever failed to find Arthur when he was looking for him. But it used to be Alvin always knew where Arthur Stuart was without even thinking, but ever since Arthur had figured out a bit of real makering—how to het up iron or soften it, which was no mean trick—it seemed he’d also figured out how to make Alvin not notice when he sort of drifted away and went off on his own.
But now wasn’t the time for remonstration, not with Abe a-lookin’ on.
“You decided Coz could be trusted with his own money tonight after all?” asked Alvin.
“Coz can’t be trusted with his own elbows,” said Abe, “but it occurred to me that you and Arthur Stuart here have become right good friends, and I’d be sorry to lose track of you.”
“Well, it’s bound to happen,” said Alvin, “since the only way to get your profits back north is to buy passage and get aboard afore Coz falls in love again.”
“You seem to be a wandering man,” said Abe, “and not likely to have a place where a man can send you a letter. Me, though, I’m rooted. I don’t make much money doing much of anything yet, but I know where I want to do it. You write to Abraham Lincoln, town of Springfield, state of Noisy River, that’ll reach me right enough.”
Alvin had no shortage of friends in his life, but never had a man he liked so well upon such short acquaintance made it so plain that he liked him back. “Abe, I won’t forget that address, and indeed I expect I’ll use it. Not only that, but I do have a way that a fellow can write to me. Any letter posted to Alvin Junior in the care of Alvin Miller in the town of Vigor Church would reach me in due time.”
“Your folks, I reckon.”
“I grew up there and we’re still on speaking terms,” said Alvin with a smile.
But Abe didn’t smile back. “I know the name of Vigor Church, and a dark story attached to the place.”
“The story’s dark enough, and also true,” said Alvin. “But if you know the tale, you know there was some as didn’t take part in the massacre of Prophet’s Town, and didn’t have no curse upon them.”
“I never thought about it, but I reckon there had to be some as had clean hands.”
Alvin held his hands up. “But that doesn’t mean as much as it once did, because the curse has been lifted and the sin forgiven.”
“I hadn’t heard that.”
“It isn’t much spoken of,” said Alvin. “If you want to learn the whole of the tale, you’re welcome to visit my family there at any time. It’s a welcoming house, with many a visitor, and if you tell them you’re a friend of me and a certain stepbrother-in-law of mine, they’ll serve you extra helpings and perhaps tell you a tale or two that you haven’t heard afore.”
“You can be sure I’ll go there,” said Abe. “And I’m glad to think tonight won’t be the last I’ll hear of you.”
“You can’t be any gladder than me,” said Alvin.
With a handshake they parted yet again, and soon Abe’s
long legs were carrying him back toward the tavern with a stride that parted the flow of the crowd in the street like an upriver steamboat.
“I like that man,” sa I think there’s more to him than making folks laugh.”
“Not to mention being the best-looking ugly man or the ugliest handsome man I ever seen,” said Arthur Stuart.
“Speaking of nothing much,” said Alvin, “I wish you wouldn’t do that trick of hiding your heartfire from me.”
Arthur Stuart looked at him without blinking an eye and answered just as Alvin supposed he would. “Now that we’re away from company, Al, ain’t it about time you told me what our business is here in Barcy?”
Alvin sighed. “I’ll tell you now what I told you back in Carthage when we set out on this journey. I’m going because my Peggy sent me here to Barcy, and a good husband does what his wife insists.”
“She didn’t send you to Carthage, that’s for sure. She thinks you’re gonna die there.”
“When I die, I’ll be dead everywhere, all at once,” said Alvin, a little peeved. “She can send me to the end of the world, and I’ll go, but at least I get to choose my own route.”
“You mean you really don’t know what you’re supposed to do here? When you said that before I thought you were just telling me it was none of my business.”
“It might well be none of your business,” said Alvin, “but so far it’s apparently none of my business, either. Back on the steamboat, I thought maybe our trip here had something to do with Steve Austin and Jim Bowie and the expedition to Mexico they tried to recruit me for. But then we left them behind and—”
“And freed two dozen black men as didn’t want to be slaves.”
“That was more you than me, and not a thing to be bragging on here in the streets of Barcy,” said Alvin.
“And you still have yet to figger out what Peggy has in mind,” said Arthur Stuart.
“We don’t talk like we used to,” said Alvin. “And there’s times I think she tells me of an urgent errand in one place, just so I won’t be in a different place where she saw some awful thing happening to me.”
“It’s been known to happen.”
“Well, I don’t like it. But I also know she wants our baby to have a living father, and so I go along, though I remind her from time to time that a grown man likes to know why he’s doing a thing. And in this case, what the thing is I’m supposed to be doing.”
“Is that what a grown man likes?” said Arthur Stuart, with a grin that was way too wide.
“You’ll find out when you’re growed,” said Alvin.
But the truth was, Arthur Stuart might be full grown already. Alvin didn’t know whether his father was a tall man, and his mother was so young she might not have been full grown. No matter how tall he might get, at age fifteen it was time for Alvin to stop treating him like a little brother and start treating him like a man who had the right to go his own way, if he so chose.
Which was probably why Arthur Stuart had gone to the trouble to learn how to hide his heartfire from Alvin. Not hide it completely—he’d never be able to do that. But he could make it so Alvin didn’t notice him unless he was particularly looking, and that was more hidden than Alvin ever thought he’d be able to do.
Alvin did his share of hiding from folks, too, so he couldn’t rightly begrudge the boy his privacy. For instance, there was no one who knew that Alvin not only didn’t know what errand Margaret had in mind for him, he didn’t much care, either. Or about anything else.
Because at the ripe old age of twenty-six, Alvin Miller, who had become Alvin Smith, and whose secret name was Alvin Maker; this Alvin, whose birth had been surrounded by such portents, who had been so watched over by good and evil as he was growing up; this same Alvin who had thought he had a great mission and work in his life, had long since come to realize that all those portents came to nothing, that all that watching had been wasted, because the power of makery had been given to the wrong man. In Alvin’s hands it had all come to nothing. Whatever he made got unmade just as fast or faster. There was no overtaking the Unmaker in his dire work of unraveling the world. He couldn’t teach more than scraps of the power to anyone else, so it’s not as though his plan of surrounding himself with other makers was ever going to work.
He couldn’t even save the life of his own baby, or learn languages the way Arthur Stuart could, or see the paths of the future like Margaret, or any of the other practical gifts. He was just a journeyman smith who by sheerest accident got himself a golden plow which he’d been carrying around in a poke for five years now, and for what?
Alvin had no idea why God had singled him out to be the seventh son of a seventh son, but whatever God’s plan might have been at first, Alvin must have muffed it by now, because even the Unmaker seemed to be leaving him alone. Once he had been so formidable that he was surrounded by enemies. Now even his enemies had lost interest in him. What clearer sign of failure could you find than that?
It was this dark mood that rode in his heart all the way into Barcy proper, and perhaps it was the cloud that it put in his visage that made the first two houses turn them away.
He was so darkhearted by the time they come to the third house that he didn’t even try to be personable. “I’m a journeyman smith from up north,” he said, “and this boy is passing as my slave but he’s not, he’s free, and I’m blamed if I’m going to make him sleep down with the servants. I want a room with two good beds, and I’ll pay faithful but I won’t have anybody treating this young fellow like a servant.”
The woman at the door looked from him to Arthur Stuart and back again. “If you make that speech at every door, I’m surprised you ain’t got you a mob of men with clubs and a rope following’ behind.”
“Mostly I just ask for a room,” said Alvin, “but I’m in a bad mood.”
“Well, control your tongue in future,” said the woman. “It happens you chose the right door for that speech, by sheer luck or perversity. I have the room you want, with the two beds, and this being a house where slavery is hated as an offense against God, you’ll find no one quarrels with you for treating this young man as an equal.”

Copyright © 2003 by Orson Scott Card

Excerpted from

The Crystal City
by Orson Scott Card
Buy this book at Barnes & Noble

Earthfall

QUARRELING WITH GOD


Vusadka: the place where humans first set foot when their starships brought them to the planet they named Harmony. Their starships settled to the ground; the first of the colonists disembarked and planted crops in the lush land to the south of the landing field. Eventually all the colonists came out of the ships, moved on, left them behind.
Left to themselves, the ships would eventually have oxidized, rotted, weathered away. But the humans who came to this place had eyes for the future. Someday our descendants may want these ships, they said. So they enclosed the landing place in a stasis field. No wind-driven dust, no rain or condensation, no direct sunlight or ultraviolet radiation would strike the ships. Oxygen, the most corrosive of all poisons, was removed from the atmosphere inside the dome. The master computer of the planet Harmony—called “the Oversoul” by the descendants of those first colonists—kept all humans far away from the large island where the ships were harbored. Within that protective bubble, the starships waited for forty million years.
Now, though, the bubble was gone. The air here was breathable. The landing field once again rang with the voices of human beings. And not just the somber adults who had first walked this ground—many of those scurrying back and forth from one ship or building to another were children. They were all hard at work, taking functional parts from the other ships to transform one of them into an operational starship. And when the ship they called Basilica was ready, all parts working, fully stocked and loaded, they would climbinside for the last time and leave this world where more than a million generations of their ancestors had lived, in order to return to Earth, the planet where human civilization had first appeared—but had lasted for fewer than ten thousand years.
What is Earth to us, Hushidh wondered, as she watched the children and adults at work. Why are we going to such lengths to return there, when Harmony is our home. Whatever ties once bound us there surely rusted away in all these intervening years.
Yet they would go, because the Oversoul had chosen them to go. Had bent and manipulated all their lives to bring them to this place at this time. Often Hushidh was glad of the attention the Oversoul had paid to them. But at other times, she resented the fact that they had not been left to work out the course of their own lives.
But if we have no ties to Earth, we have scarcely more to Harmony, thought Hushidh. And she alone of the people here could see that this observation was literally, not just figuratively, true. All the people here were chosen because they had particular sensitivity to the mental communications of the Oversoul; in Hushidh, this sensitivity took an odd form. She could look at people and sense immediately the strength of the relationships binding them to all the other people in their lives. It came to her as a waking vision: She could see the relationships like cords of light, tying one person to the others in her life.
For instance, her younger sister, Luet, the only blood relative Hushidh had known through all her growing-up years. As Hushidh rested in the shade, Luet came by, her daughter Chveya right behind her, carrying lunch into the starship for those who were working on the computers. All her life, Hushidh had seen her own connection to Lutya as the one great certainty. They grew up not knowing who their parents were, as virtual charity cases in Rasa’s great teaching house in the city of Basilica. All fears, all slights, all uncertainties were bearable, though, because there was Lutya, bound to her by cords that were no weaker for being invisible to everyone but Hushidh.
There were other ties, too, of course. Hushidh well remembered how painful it had been to watch the bond develop between Luet and her husband, Nafai, a troublesome young boy who had more enthusiasm than sense sometimes. To her surprise, however, Lutya’s new bond to her husband did not weaken her tie to Hushidh; and when Hushidh, in turn, married Nafai’s full brother, Issib, the tie between her and Luet grew even stronger than it had been in childhood, something Hushidh had never thought possible.
So now, watching Luet and Chveya pass by, Hushidh saw them, not just as a mother and daughter, but as two beings of light, bound to each other by a thick and shimmering cord. There was no stronger bond than this. Chveya loved her father, Nafai, too—but the tie between children and their fathers was always more tentative. It was in the nature of the human family: Children looked to their mothers for nurturance, comfort, the secure foundation of their lives. To their fathers, however, they looked for judgment, hoping for approval, fearing condemnation. It meant that fathers were just as powerful in their children’s lives, but no matter how loving and nurturing the father was, there was almost always an element of dread in the relationship, for the father became the focus of all the child’s fears of failure. Not that there weren’t exceptions now and then. Hushidh had simply learned to expect that in most cases, the tie with the mother was the strongest and brightest.
In her thoughts about the mother-daughter connection, Hushidh almost missed the thing that mattered. It was only as Luet and Chveya moved out of sight into the starship that Hushidh realized what had been almost missing: Lutya’s connection to her.
But that was impossible. After all these years? And why would the tie be weaker now? There had been no quarrel. They were as close as ever, as far as Hushidh knew. Hadn’t they been allies during all the long struggles between Luet’s husband and his malicious older brothers? What could possibly have changed?
Hushidh followed Luet into the ship and found her in the pilothouse, where Issib, Hushidh’s husband, was conferring with Luet’s husband, Nafai, about the life support computer system. Computers had never interested her—it was reality that she cared about, people with flesh and blood, not artificial constructs fabricated of ones and zeroes. Sometimes she thought that men reveled in computers precisely because of their unreality. Unlike women and children, computers could be completely controlled. So she took some secret delight whenever she saw Issya or Nyef frustrated by a stubbornly willful program until they finally found the programming error. She also suspected that whenever one of their children was stubbornly willful, Issya believed in his heart of hearts that the problem was simply a matter of finding the error in the child’s programming. Hushidh knew that it was not an error, but a soul in venting itself. When she tried to explain this to Issya, though, his eyes glazed over and he soon fled to the computers again
Today, though, all was working smoothly enough. Luet and Chveya laid out the noon meal for the men. Hushidh, who had no particular errand, helped them—but then, when Luet started talking about the need to call the others working in the ship to come eat, Hushidh studiously ignored the hints and thus forced Luet and Chveya to go do the summoning.
Issib might be a man and he might prefer computers to children sometimes, but he did notice things. As soon as Luet and Chveya were gone, he asked, “Was it me you wanted to talk with, Shuya, or was it Nyef?”
She kissed her husband’s cheek. “Nyef, of course. I already know everything you think.”
“Before I even know it,” said Issib, with mock chagrin. “Well, if you’re going to talk privately, you’ll have to leave. I’m busy, and I’m not leaving the room with the food on any account.”
He did not mention that it was more trouble for him to get up and leave. Even though his lifts worked in the environs of the starships, so he wasn’t confined to his chair, it still took much effort for Issib to do any major physical movement.
Nyef finished keying in some command or other, then got up from his chair and led Hushidh out into a corridor. “What is it?” he asked.
Hushidh got right to the point. “You know the way I see things,” she said.
“You mean relationships among people? Yes, I know.”
“I saw something very disturbing today.”
He waited for her to go on.
“Luet is…well, cut off. Not from you. Not from Chveya. But from everybody else.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” said Hushidh. “I can’t read minds. But it worries me. You’re not cut off. You still—heaven knows why—you still are bound by ties of love and loyalty even to your repulsive oldest brothers, even to your sisters and their sad little husbands—”
“I see that you have nothing but respect for them yourself,” said Nyef drily.
“I’m just saying that Luet used to have something of that same—whatever it is—sense of obligation to the whole community. She used to connect with everyone. Not like you, but with the women, perhaps even stronger. Definitely stronger. She was the caretaker of the women. Ever since she was found to be the Waterseer back in Basilica, she’s had that. But it’s gone.”
“Is she pregnant again? She’s not supposed to be. Nobody’s supposed to be pregnant when we launch.”
“It’s not like that, it’s not a withdrawal into self the way pregnant women do.” Actually, Hushidh was surprised Nafai had remembered that. Hushidh had only mentioned it once, years ago, that pregnant women’s connections with everyone around them weakened, as they focused inward on the child. It was Nafai’s way—for days, weeks, months, he would seem to be an overgrown adolescent, gawky, apt to say the wrong thing at the wrong time, giving the impression of never being aware of other people’s feelings. And then, suddenly, you’d realize that he was keenly aware all along, that he noticed and remembered practically everything. Which made you wonder if the times he was rude, he actually meant to be rude. Hushidh still hadn’t decided about that.
“So what is it?”
“I thought you could tell me,” said Hushidh. “Has Luet said anything that would make you think she was separating from everybody except for you and your children?”
He shrugged. “Maybe she has and I didn’t notice. I don’t always notice.”
The very fact that he said so made Hushidh doubt it. He did notice, and therefore he had noticed. He just didn’t want to talk to Hushidh about it.
“Whatever it is,” said Hushidh, “you and she don’t agree about it.”
Nafai glared at her. “If you aren’t going to believe what I say, why do you bother to ask me?”
“I keep hoping that someday you’ll decide that I’m worthy to be trusted with the inner secrets.”
“My, but we’re feeling out of sorts today, aren’t we,” said Nafai.
It was when he started acting like a little brother that Hushidh most hated him. “I must mention to Luet sometime that she made a serious mistake when she stopped those women from putting you to death when you violated the sanctity of the lake back in Basilica.”
“I’m of the same opinion,” said Nafai. “It would have spared me the agony of watching you suffer through the distress of being my sister-in-law.”
“I would rather give birth every day, that’s how bad it is,” said Hushidh.
He grinned at her. “I’ll look into it,” he said. “I honestly don’t know why Luet would be separating herself from everybody else, and I think it’s dangerous, and so I’ll look into it.”
So he was going to take her seriously, even if he wasn’t going to tell her what he already thought the problem was. Well, that was about as much as she could hope for. Nafai might be leader of the community right now, but it wasn’t because he had any particular skill at it. Elemak, Nafai’s oldest brother, was the natural leader. It was only because Nafai had the Oversoul on his side—or, rather, because the Oversoul had Nafai on her side—that he had been given the power to rule. Authority didn’t come easily to him and he wasn’t always sure what to do with it—and what not to do. He made mistakes. Hushidh just hoped that this wouldn’t be one of those times.
Potya would be hungry. She had to get back home. It was because Hushidh was nursing a newborn that she was spared most duties involved with preparing for launch. In feet, the schedule for the launch had been set up to accommodate her pregnancy. She and Rasa had been the last to get pregnant before they found out that no one could be pregnant during the voyage. That was because the chemicals and low temperature that would maintain almost all of them in suspended animation during the voyage could do terrible things to an embryo. Rasa’s baby, a little girl she gave the too-cute name of Tsennyi, which meant “precious,” had been born a month before Hushidh’s third son and sixth child. Shyopot, she had named him. “Whisper.” Potya as his dearname, his quickname. Coming at the last moment, like a breath of a word from the Oversoul. The last whisper in her heart before she left this world forever. Issib had thought the name was odd, but it was better then “precious,” which they both thought was proof that Rasa had lost all sense of judgment and proportion. Potya was waiting, Potya would be hungry, Hushidh’s breasts were telling her so with some urgency.
On the way out of the ship, however, she passed Luet, who greeted her cheerfully, sounding like she always did, as loving and sweet as ever. Hushidh wanted to slap her. Don’t lie to me! Don’t seem so normal when I know that you have cut yourself off from me in hour heart! If you can put on our affectionate closeness like a mask, then I’ll never be able to take joy in it again.
“What’s wrong?” asked Luet.
“What could be wrong?” asked Hushidh.
“You wear your heart on your face,” said Luet, “at least to me. You’re angry at me and I don’t know why.”
“Let’s not have this conversation now,” said Hushidh.
“When, then? What have I done?”
“That’s exactly the question I’d like to know. What have you done? Or what are you planning to do?”
That was it. The slight flaring of Luet’s eyelids, her hesitation before showing a reaction, as if she were deciding what reaction she ought to show—Hushidh knew that it was something Luet was planning to do. She was plotting something, and whatever it was, it required her to become emotionally distant from everyone else in the community.
“Nothing,” said Luet. “I’m no different from anyone else these days, Hushidh. I’m raising my children and doing my work to prepare for the voyage.”
“Whatever it is you’re plotting, Lutya,” said Hushidh, “don’t do it. It isn’t worth it.”
“You don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“True, but you know. And I’m telling you, it isn’t worth cutting yourself off from the rest of us. It isn’t worth cutting yourself off from me.”
Luet looked stricken, and this, at least, was no sham. Unless everything was a sham and always had been. Hushidh couldn’t bear to believe that.
“Shuya,” said Luet, “have you seen that? Is it true? I didn’t know, but maybe it’s true, maybe I’ve already cut myself off from—oh, Shuya.” Luet flung her arms around Hushidh.
Reluctantly—but why am I reluctant, she wondered—Hushidh returned the embrace.
“I won’t,” said Luet. “I won’t do anything that would cut me off from you. I can’t believe that I—can’t you do something about it?”
“Do something?” asked Hushidh.
“You know, the way you did to Rashgallivak’s men when he came to Aunt Rasa’s door that time, meaning to carry her daughters away. You tore his men’s loyalty from him and brought him down, just like that. Don’t you remember?”
Hushidh remembered, all right. But that had been easy, for she could see that the ties between Rash and his men were very weak, and it took only a few well-placed words and a bit of attitude to fill them with contempt for him and cause them to abandon him on the spot. “It’s not the same,” said Hushidh. I can’t make people do things. I could strip Rash’s men of their loyalty because they didn’t really want to follow him anyway. I can’t rebuild your ties to the rest of us. That’s something you have to do yourself.”
“But I want to,” said Luet.
“What’s going on?” asked Hushidh. “Just explain it to me.”
“I can’t,” said Luet.
“Why not?”
“Because nothing is going on.”
But something’s going to go on, is that it?”
“No!” said Luet, and now she sounded angry, adamant. “It will not happen. And therefore there’s nothing to discuss.” With that, Luet fled up the ladderway leading to the center of the ship, where the meal was waiting, where the others were gathering.
It’s the Oversoul, Hushidh knew then. The Oversold has told Luet to do something that she doesn’t want to do. And if she does it, it will cut her off from all the rest of us. From everybody except her husband and children. What is it? What is the Oversoul up to?
And whatever it was, why hadn’t the Oversoul included Hushidh in it?
For the first time, Hushidh found herself thinking of the Oversoul as an enemy. For die first time, Hushidh discovered that she herself did not have any strong ties of loyalty to the Oversoul. Just like that, mere suspicion had dissolved them. What are you doing to me and my sister, Holy One? Whatever it is, cut it out.
But no answer came to her. Just silence.
The Oversoul has chosen Luet to do something, and she has not chosen me. What is it? I have to know. Because if it’s something terrible, I’m going to put a stop to it.
* * *
Luet did not like the building they lived in these days. Hard surfaces everywhere, smooth and unalive. She missed the wooden house they had lived in for eight years in their little village of Dostatok, before her husband found and opened the ancient starport of Vusadka. And before that, all her memories were of living in Rasa’s house in Basilica. City of women, city of grace; she yearned sometimes for the mists of the hidden and holy lake, for the noise of the crowded markets, for the endless rows of buildings elbowing their way out over the street. But this place—had the builders ever thought of it as beautiful? Had they liked to live in such dead places?
Yet it was home, all the same, because here was where her children gathered to sleep, to eat; where Nafai finally came home so late at night, to curl up wearily beside her on their bed. And when the time came to enter the starship they had named Basilica, she would no doubt miss this place also, the memories of frenzied work and excited children and groundless fears. If the fears turned out to be groundless.
Returning to Earth—what did that mean, when no human had been there for millions of years? And those dreams that kept coming into their minds, dreams of giant rats that seemed to be filled with a malevolent intelligence, dreams of batlike creatures who seemed to be allies but were still ugly beyond belief. Even the Oversoul did not know what those dreams meant, or why the Keeper of Earth might have sent them. Still, the overall impression Luet got from everyone’s dreams of Earth was that it was not going to be a paradise when they got there.
What really frightened her, though—and, she suspected, frightened everyone else, too—was the voyage itself. A hundred years asleep? And supposedly they would emerge without having aged a day? It seemed like something out of a myth, like the poor girl who pricked her finger on a mouse’s tooth and fell asleep, only to find that when she woke up, all the rich and beautiful girls were fat old ladies, while she remained the most youthful and beautiful of all. But still poor. That was an odd ending to that story, Luet always thought, that she was still poor. Surely there ought to be some version of it in which the king chose her because of her beauty instead of marrying the richest woman to get his hands on her estate. But that had nothing to do with what she was worrying about right now. Why had her mind wandered so far afield? Oh, yes. Because she was thinking about the voyage. About lying down on the ship and letting the life support system poke needles into her and freeze her for the voyage. How did they know that they wouldn’t simply die?
Well, they could have died a thousand times since things first started falling apart in Basilica. Instead they had lived this long, and the Oversoul had led them to this place, and so far things were working out reasonably well. They had their children. They had prospered. No one had died or even been seriously injured. Ever since Nafai had got the starmaster’s cloak from the Oversoul, even Elemak and Mebbekew, his hate-filled older brothers, had been relatively cooperative—and it was well-known that they hated the idea of voyaging back to Earth.
So why was the Oversoul so grimly determined to ruin everything?
<;I’m grimly determined to save your lives, you and your husband.>; Here in this place where the Oversoul actually lived, Luet heard the voice of the Oversoul far more easily than she ever had back in Basilica.
“The starmaster’s cloak will protect Nafai,” Luet murmured. “And he will protect us.”
<;And when he’s old? When Elemak has taught his sons to hate you and your children? It’s elementary mathematics, Luet. When the division of your community comes—and it will come—on the one side there will be Elemak and his four sons, Mebbekew and his son, Obring and his two sons, Vas and his son. Four strong adult males, eight boys. And on your side, who? Your husband, of course. But who are his allies? His father, Volemak?>;
“Old,” murmured Luet.

“Even if he stood with Nafai, he isn’t much.”

“Only if Nafai fails to hold everyone together.”
;
“You persuade him.”

“That’s because he knows that your plan would be a disaster. It would cause the very thing that you claim to be trying to prevent.”

“Resentment! Oh, just a little. We reach Earth and all the adults are wakened from suspended animation, only to discover—oops!—Nafai and Luet somehow neglected to go into suspended animation themselves, and—oops again!—they somehow got a dozen of the older children to stay awake with them for the whole ten years of the voyage! So you see, my dear sister Shuya, when you went to bed your daughter Dza was only eight years old, but now she’s eighteen, and married to Padarok, who, by the way, is seventeen now—sorry about that, Shedemei and Zdorab, we knew you wouldn’t mind if we raised your only son for you. And while we had these children up, we happened to spend the whole time teaching them, so that now they are experts on everything they’ll need to know to build our colony. They’re also large and strong enough to do adult work. But—oops again!—none of your children, Eiadh and Kokor and Sevet and Dol, none of yours has had any of this training. Yours are still little children who won’t be much help at all.”
< I see that you have thought through every aspect of the plan. Why can’t you see that it is both necessary and flawless? >
“They’ll be furious,” said Luet. “They’ll all hate us—Volemak and Rasa and Issib and Shuya and Shedemei and Zdorab because we stole their oldest children from them, and all the others because we didn’t give the same advantage to their children.”
< They will be angry, but those who are my trusted friends will soon come to understand the necessity of having their children be older and stronger. It will change the balance of physical power in the community. It will keep you all alive >
“They’ll always be sure that the only reason the community broke apart was because Nafai and I did such a terrible thing. They’ll hate us and blame us and they will certainly never trust us again.”
< I will tell them that it was my idea. >
“And they’ll say that you’re just a computer and of course you didn’t understand how humans would feel, but we understood, and we should have refused to do
it.”

“I already refused. I refuse again now.”

“No!” cried Luet.
“Mother?” It was Chveya’s voice, through the door of Luet’s room.
“What is it, Veya?”
“Who are you talking to?”
“Myself, in a dream. All foolishness. Go back to sleep.”
“Is Father home yet?”
“Still in the ship with Issib.”
“Mother?”
“Go to sleep now, Chveya. I mean it.”
She heard the scuffing sound of Chveya’s sandals on the floor. What had Chveya heard? How long had she been listening at the door?

Why didn’t you warn me?
< Why did you speak out loud? I hear your thoughts. >
Because when I speak out loud my thoughts are clearer, that’s why. What’s your plan, to get Chveya to carry out your plot?
< Since you won’t discuss it with Nafai, I woke Chveya to hear what you were saying. She’ll bring it up with him. >
Why couldn’t you just talk to him yourself?
< He won’t listen to me. >
That’s because he’s a very wise man. That’s why I love him.
< He needs another perspective. You would have been best. Chveya will do. >
You leave my children alone.

< Your children are people in their own right. When you were Chveya’s age, you already were known as the Waterseer of Basilica. I didn’t notice you complaining that I had such a relationship with you then. And when Chveya first started getting dreams from the Keeper of Earth, I seem to recall that you rejoiced. >
“And to think I once thought of you as…as a god.”
< And what do you think I am now? >
“If I didn’t know you were a computer program, I’d say you were a meddlesome, loathsome old bitch.”
< You can be angry at me if you like. It doesn’t hurt my feelings I even understand. But you have to take the long view, Luet. I do. >
“Yes, your view is so long that you hardly notice how you ruin the lives of little mayflies like us.”
< Has your life been so terrible up to now? >
“Let’s just say that it hasn’t gone as expected.”
< ;But has it been so terrible? >
“Shut up and leave me alone.”
Luet threw herself back down on the bed and tried to sleep. But she kept remembering: Hushidh saw that I am no longer connected to the others in the community. That means that somewhere in my heart I already have the unconscious intention of doing what the Over-soul has planned. So I might as well give up and do it consciously.
Do it and then spend the rest of my life knowing that my sister and Aunt Rasa and dear Shedemei all hate me and that I absolutely, completely deserve their hatred.

Copyright ©1995 by Orson Scott Card

Excerpted from

Earthfall
by Orson Scott Card
Buy this book at Barnes & Noble

The Memory of Earth

FATHER’S HOUSE


Nafai woke before dawn on his mat in his father’s house. He wasn’t allowed to sleep in his mother’s house anymore, being fourteen years old. No self-respecting woman of Basilica would put her daughter in Rasa’s household if a fourteen-year-old boy were in residence—especially since Nafai had started a growth spurt at the age of twelve that showed no signs of stopping even though he was already near two meters in height.
Only yesterday he had overheard his mother talking with her friend Dhelembuvex. “People are beginning to speculate on when you’re going to find an auntie for him,” said Dhel.
“He’s still just a boy,” said Mother.
Dhel hooted with laughter. “Rasa, my dear, are you so afraid of growing old that you can’t admit your little baby is a man?”
“It’s not fear of age,” said Mother. “There’s time enough for aunties and mates and all that business when he starts thinking about it himself.”
“Oh, he’s thinking about it already,” said Dhel. “He’s just not talking to you about it.”
It was true enough; it had made Nafai blush when he heard her say it, and it made him blush again when he remembered it. How did Dhel know, just to look at him for a moment that day, that his thoughts were so often on “that business”? But no, Dhel didn’t know it because of anything she had seen in Nafai. She knew it because she knew men. I’m just going through an age, thought Nafai. All boys start thinking thesethoughts at about this age. Anyone can point at a male who’s near two meters in height but still beardless and say, “That boy is thinking about sex right now,” and most of the time they’ll be right.
But I’m not like all the others, thought Nafai. I hear Mebbekew and his friends talking, and it makes me sick. I don’t like thinking of women that crudely, sizing them up like mares to see what they’re likely to be useful for. A pack animal or can I ride her? Is she a walker or can we gallop? Do I keep her in the stable or bring her out to show my friends?
That wasn’t the way Nafai thought about women at all. Maybe because he was still in school, still talking to women every day about intellectual subjects. I’m not in love with Eiadh because she’s the most beautiful young woman in Basilica and therefore quite probably in the entire world. I’m in love with her because we can talk together, because of the way she thinks, the sound of her voice, the way she cocks her head to listen to an idea she doesn’t agree with, the way she rests her hand on mine when she’s trying to persuade me.
Nafai suddenly realized that the sky was starting to grow light outside his window, and here he was lying in bed dreaming of Eiadh, when if he had any brains at all he’d get up and get into the city and see her in person.
No sooner thought of than done. He sat up, knelt beside his mat, slapped his bare thighs and chest and offered the pain to the Oversoul, then rolled up his bed and put it in his box in the corner. I don’t really need a bed, thought Nafai. If I were a real man I could sleep on the floor and not mind it. That’s how I’ll become as hard and lean as Father. As Elemak. I won’t use the bed tonight.
He walked out into the courtyard to the water tank. He dipped his hands into the small sink, moistened the soap, and rubbed it all over. The air was cool and the water was cooler, but he pretended not to notice until he was lathered up. He knew that this chill was nothing compared to what would happen in a moment. He stood under the shower and reached up for the cord—and then hesitated, bracing himself for the misery to come.
“Oh, just pull it,” said Issib.
Nafai looked over toward Issib’s room. He was floating in the air just in front of the doorway. “Easy for you to say,” Nafai answered him.
Issib, being a cripple, couldn’t use the shower; his floats weren’t supposed to get wet. So one of the servants took his floats off and bathed him every night. “You’re such a baby about cold water,” said Issib.
“Remind me to put ice down your neck at supper.”
“As long as you woke me up with all your shivering and chattering out here—”
“I didn’t make a sound,” said Nafai.
“I decided to go with you into the city today.”
“Fine, fine. Fine as wine,” said Nafai.
“Are you planning to let the soap dry? It gives your skin a charming sort of whiteness, but after a few hours it might begin to itch.”
Nafai pulled the cord.
Immediately ice-cold water cascaded out of the tank over his head. He gasped—it always hit with a shock—and then bent and turned and twisted and splashed water into every nook and crevice of his body to rinse the soap off. He had only thirty seconds to get clean before the shower stopped, and if he didn’t finish in that time he either had to live with the unrinsed soap for the rest of the day—and it did itch, like a thousand fleabites—or wait a couple of minutes, freezing his butt off, for the little shower tank to refill from the big water tank. Neither consequence was any fun, so he had long since learned the routine so well that he was always clean before the water stopped.
“I love watching that little dance you do,” said Issib.
“Dance?”
“Bend to the left, rinse the armpit, bend the other way, rinse the left armpit, bend over and spread your cheeks to rinse your butt, bend over backward—”
“All right, I get it,” said Nafai.
“I’m serious, I think it’s a wonderful little routine. You ought to show it to the manager of the Open Theatre. Or even the Orchestra. You could be a star.”
“A fourteen-year-old dancing naked under a stream of water,” said Nafai. “I think they’d show that in a different kind of theatre.”
“But still in Dolltown! You’d still be a hit in Dolltown!”
By now Nafai had toweled himself dry—except his hair, which was still freezing cold. He wanted to run for his room the way he used to do when he was little, jabbering nonsense words—“ooga-booga looga-booga” had been a favorite—while he pulled on his clothes and rubbed himself to get warm. But he was a man now, and it was only autumn, not winter yet, so he forced himself to walk casually toward his room. Which is why he was still in the courtyard, stark naked and cold as ice, when Elemak strode through the gate.
“A hundred and twenty-eight days,” he bellowed.
“Elemak!” cried Issib. “You’re back!”
“No thanks to the hill robbers,” said Elemak. He walked straight to the shower, pulling off his clothes as he went. “They hit us only two days ago, way too close to Basilica. I think we killed one this time.”
“Don’t you know whether you did or not?” asked Nafai.
“I used the pulse, of course.”
Of course? thought Nafai. To use a hunting weapon against a person?
“I saw him drop, but I wasn’t about to go back and check, so maybe he just tripped and fell down at the exact moment that I fired.”
Elemak pulled the shower cord before he soaped. The moment the water hit him he yowled, and then did his own little splash dance, shaking his head and flipping water all over the courtyard while jabbering “ooga-booga looga-booga” just like a little kid.
It was all right for Elemak to act that way. He was twenty-four now, he had just got his caravan safely back from purchasing exotic plants in the jungle city of Tishchetno, the first time anyone from Basilica had gone there in years, and he might actually have killed a robber on the way. No one could think of Elemak as anything but a man. Nafai knew the rules: When a man acts like a child, he’s boyish, and everyone’s delighted; when a boy acts the same way, he’s childish, and everyone tells him to be a man.
Elemak was soaping up now. Nafai—freezing still, even with his arms folded across his chest—was about to go into his room and snag his clothes, when Elemak started talking again.
“You’ve grown since I left, Nyef.”
“I’ve been doing that lately.”
“Looks good on you. Muscling up pretty well. You take after the old man in all the right ways. Got your mother’s face, though.”
Nafai liked the tone of approval in Elemak’s voice, but it was also vaguely demeaning to stand there naked as a jaybird while his brother sized him up.
Issib, of course, only made it worse. “Got Father’s most important feature, fortunately,” he said.
“Well, we all got that,” said Elemak. “All of the old man’s babies have been boys—or at least all his babies that we know about.” He laughed.
Nafai hated it when Elemak talked about Father that way. Everyone knew that Father was a chaste man who only had sex with his lawful mate. And for the past fifteen years that mate had been Rasa, Nafai’s and Issib’s mother, the contract renewed every year. He was so faithful that women had given up coming to visit and hint around about availability when his contract lapsed. Of course, Mother was just as faithful and there were still plenty of men plying her with gifts and innuendoes—but that’s how some men were, they found faithfulness even more enticing than wantonness, as if Rasa were staying so faithful to Wetchik only to goad them on in their pursuit of her. Also, mating with Rasa meant sharing what some thought was the finest house and what all agreed was the finest view in Basilica. I’d never mate with a woman just for her house, thought Nafai.
“Are you crazy or what?” asked Elemak.
“What?” asked Nafai.
“It’s cold as a witch’s tit out here and you’re standing there sopping wet and buck naked.”
“Yeah,” said Nafai. But he didn’t run for his room—that would be admitting that the cold was bothering him. So he grinned at Elemak first. “Welcome home,” he said.
“Don’t be such a show-off, Nyef,” said Elemak. “I know you’re dying of the cold—your dangling parts are shriveling up.”
Nafai sauntered to his room and pulled on his pants and shirt. It really bothered him that Elemak always seemed to know what was going on in Nafai’s head. Elemak could never imagine that maybe Nafai was so hardened and manly that the cold simply didn’t bother him. No, Elemak always assumed that if Nafai did something manly it was nothing but an act. Of course, it was an act, so Elemak was right, but that only made it more annoying. How do men become manly, if not by putting it on as an act until it becomes habit and then, finally, their character? Besides, it wasn’t completely an act. For a minute there, seeing Elemak home again, hearing him talk about maybe killing a man on his trip, Nafai had forgotten that he was cold, had forgotten everything.
There was a shadow in the doorway. It was Issib. “You shouldn’t let him get to you like that, Nafai.”
“What do you mean?”
“Make you so angry. When he teases you.”
Nafai was genuinely puzzled. “What do you mean, angry? I wasn’t angry.”
“When he made that joke about how cold you were,” said Issib. “I thought you were going to go over and knock his head off.”
“But I wasn’t mad.”
“Then you’re a genuine mental case, my boy,” said Issib. “I thought you were mad. He thought you were mad. The Oversoul thought you were mad.”
“The Oversoul knows that I wasn’t angry at all.”
“Then learn to control your face, Nyef, because apparently it’s showing emotions that you don’t even feel. As soon as you turned your back he jammed his finger at you, that’s how mad he thought you were.”
Issib floated away. Nafai pulled on his sandals and criss-crossed the laces up around his pantlegs. The style among young men around Basilica was to wear long laces up the thighs and tie them together just under the crotch, but Nafai cut the laces short and wore them knee-high, like a serious workingman. Having a thick leather knot between their legs caused young men to swagger, rolling side to side when they walked, trying to keep their thighs from rubbing together and chafing from the knot. Nafai didn’t swagger and loathed the whole idea of a fashion that made clothing less comfortable.
Of course, rejecting fashion meant that he didn’t fit in as easily with boys his age, but Nafai hardly minded that. It was women whose company he enjoyed most, and the women whose good opinion he valued were the ones who were not swayed by trivial fashions. Eiadh, for one, had often joined him in ridiculing the high-laced sandals. “Imagine wearing those riding a horse,” she had said once.
“Enough to make a bull into a steer,” Nafai had quipped in reply, and Eiadh had laughed and then repeated his joke several times later in the day. If a woman like that existed in the world, why should a man bother with silly fashions?
When Nafai got to the kitchen, Elemak was just sliding a frozen rice pudding into the oven. The pudding looked large enough to feed them all, but Nafai knew from experience that Elemak intended the whole thing for himself. He’d been traveling for months, eating mostly cold food, moving almost entirely at night—Elemak would eat the entire pudding in about six swallows and then go collapse on his bed and sleep till dawn tomorrow.
“Where’s Father?” asked Elemak.
“A short trip,” said Issib, who was breaking raw eggs over his toast, preparing them for the oven. He did it quite deftly, considering that simply grasping an egg in one hand took all his strength. He would hold the egg a few inches over the table, then clench just the right muscle to release the float that was holding up his arm, causing it to drop, egg and all, onto the table surface. The egg would split exactly right—every time—and then he’d clench another muscle, the float would swing his arm up over the plate, and then he’d open the egg with his other hand and it would pour out onto the toast. There wasn’t much Issib couldn’t do for himself, with the floats taking care of gravity for him. But it meant Issib could never go traveling the way Father and Elemak and, sometimes, Mebbekew did. Once he was away from the magnetics of the city, Issib had to ride in his chair, a clumsy machine that he could only ride from place to place. It wouldn’t help him do anything. Away from the city, confined to his chair, Issib was really crippled.
“Where’s Mebbekew?” asked Elemak. The pudding was done—overdone, actually, but that’s the way Elemak always ate breakfast, cooked until it was so soft you didn’t need teeth to eat it. Nafai figured it was because he could swallow it faster that way.
“Spent the night in the city,” said Issib.
Elemak laughed. “That’s what he’ll say when he gets back. But I think Meb is all plow and no planting.”
There was only one way for a man of Mebbekew’s age to spend a night inside the walls of Basilica, and that was if some woman had him in her home. Elemak might tease that Mebbekew claimed to have more women than he got, but Nafai had seen the way Meb acted with some women, at least. Mebbekew didn’t have to pretend to spend a night in the city; he probably accepted fewer invitations than he got.
Elemak took a huge bite of pudding. Then he cried out, opened his mouth, and poured in wine straight from the table jug. “Hot,” he said, when he could talk again.
“Isn’t it always?” asked Nafai.
He had meant it as a joke, a little jest between brothers. But for some reason Elemak took it completely wrong, as if Nafai had been calling him stupid for taking the bite. “Listen, little boy,” said Elemak, “when you’ve been out on the road eating cold food and sleeping in dust and mud for two-and-a-half months, maybe you forget just how hot a pudding can be.”
“Sorry,” said Nafai. “I didn’t meant anything bad.”
“Just be careful who you make fun of,” said Elemak. “You’re only my half-brother, after all.”
“That’s all right,” said Issib cheerfully. “He has the same effect on full brothers, too.” Issib was obviously trying to smooth things over and keep a quarrel from developing.
Elemak seemed willing enough to go along. “I imagine it’s harder on you,” he said. “Good thing you’re a cripple or Nafai here probably wouldn’t have lived to be eighteen.”
If the remark about being a cripple stung Issib, he didn’t show it. It infuriated Nafai, however. Here Issib was trying to keep the peace, and Elemak casually insulted him for it. So, while Nafai hadn’t had the slightest intention of picking a fight before, he was ready for one now. Elemak’s having counted his age in planting years instead of temple years was a good enough pretext. “I’m fourteen,” said Nafai. “Not eighteen.”
“Temple years, planting years,” said Elemak. “If you were a horse you’d be eighteen.”
Nafai walked over and stood about a pace from Elemak’s chair. “But I’m not a horse,” said Nafai.
“You’re not a man yet, either,” said Elemak. “And I’m too tired to want to beat you senseless right now. So fix your breakfast and let me eat mine.” He turned to Issib. “Did Father take Rashgallivak with him?”
Nafai was surprised at the question. How could Father take the estate manager with him, when Elemak was also gone? Truzhnisha would keep the household running, of course; but without Rashgallivak, who would manage the greenhouses, the stables, the gossips, the booths? Certainly not Mebbekew—he had no interest in the day-to-day duties of Father’s business. And the men would hardly take orders from Issib—they regarded him with tenderness or pity, not respect.
“No, Father left Rash in charge,” Issib said. “Rash was probably sleeping out at the coldhouse tonight. But you know Father never leaves without seeing that everything’s in order.”
Elemak cast a quick, sidelong glance at Nafai. “Just wondered why certain people were getting so cocky.”
Then it dawned on Nafai: Elemak’s question was really a back-handed compliment—he had wondered whether Father had put Nafai in charge of things in his absence. And plainly Elemak didn’t like the idea of Nafai running any part of the Wetchik family’s rare-plant business.
“I’m not interested in taking over the weed trade,” said Nafai, “if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I’m not worried about anything at all,” said Elemak. “Isn’t it time for you to go to Mama’s school? She’ll be afraid her little boy got robbed and beaten on the road.”
Nafai knew he should let Elemak’s taunt go unanswered, shouldn’t provoke him anymore. The last thing he wanted was to have Elemak as an enemy. But the very fact that he looked up to Elemak so much, wanted so much to be like him, made it impossible for Nafai to leave the gibe unanswered. As he headed for the courtyard door, he turned back to say, “I have much higher aims in life than skulking around shooting at robbers and sleeping with camels and carrying tundra plants to the tropics and tropical plants to the glaciers. I’ll leave that game to you.”
Suddenly Elemak’s chair flew across the room as he jumped to his feet and in two strides had Nafai’s face pressed against the doorframe. It hurt, but Nafai hardly noticed the pain, or even the fear that Elemak might hurt him even worse. Instead there was a strange feeling of triumph. I made Elemak lose his temper. He doesn’t get to keep pretending that he thinks I’m not worth noticing.
“That game, as you call it, pays for everything you have and everything you are,” said Elemak. “If it wasn’t for the money that Father and Rash and I bring in, do you think anybody’d pay attention to you in Basilica? Do you think your mother has so much honor that it would actually transfer to her sons? If you think that, then you don’t know how the world works. Your mother might be able to make her daughters into hot stuff, but the only thing a woman can do for a son is make a scholar out of him.” He practically spat the word scholar. “And believe me, boy, that’s all you’re ever going to be. I don’t know why the Oversoul even bothered putting a boy’s parts on you, little girl, because all you’re going to have in this world when you grow up is what a woman gets.”
Again, Nafai knew that he should keep his silence and let Elemak have the last word. But the retort no sooner came to his mind than it came out of his mouth. “Is calling me a woman your subtle way of telling me you’ve got some heat for me? I think you’ve been out on the road too long if I’m starting to look irresistible.”
At once Elemak let go of him. Nafai turned around, half-expecting to see Elemak laughing, shaking his head about how their playing sometimes got out of hand. Instead his brother was standing there red-faced, breathing heavily, like an animal poised to lunge. “Get out of this house,” said Elemak, “and don’t come back while I’m here.”
“It’s not your house,” Nafai pointed out.
“The next time I see you here I’ll kill you.”
“Come on, Elya, you know I was only joking.”
Issib floated blithely between them and cast an arm clumsily across Nafai’s shoulders. “We’re late getting into the city, Nyef. Mother will be worried about us.”
This time Nafai had sense enough to shut his mouth and let things go. He did know how to hold his tongue—he just never remembered to do it soon enough. Now Elemak was furious at him. Might be angry for days. Where will I sleep if I can’t go home? Nafai wondered. Immediately there flashed in his mind an image of Eiadh whispering to him, “Why not stay tonight in my room? After all, we’re surely going to be mates one day. A woman trains her favorite nieces to be mates for her sons, doesn’t she? I’ve known that since I first knew you, Nafai. Why should we wait any longer? After all, you’re only about the stupidest human being in all of Basilica.”
Nafai came out of his reverie to realize that it was Issib speaking to him, not Eiadh. “Why do you keep goading him like that,” Issib was saying, “When you know it’s all Elemak can do to keep from killing you sometimes?”
“I think of things and sometimes I say them when I shouldn’t,” said Nafai.
“You think of stupid things and you’re so stupid that you say them every time.”
“Not every time.”
“Oh, you mean there are even stupider things that you don’t say? What a mind you’ve got! A treasure!” Issib was floating ahead of him. He always did that going up the ridge road, forgetting that for people who had to deal with gravity, a slower pace might be more comfortable.
“I like Elemak,” said Nafai miserably. “I don’t understand why he doesn’t like me.”
“I’ll get him to make you a list sometime,” said Issib. “I’ll paste it onto the end of my own.”

Copyright © 1992 by Orson Scott Card

Excerpted from

The Memory of Earth
by Orson Scott Card
Buy this book at Barnes & Noble

Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus

The Governor


There was only one time when Columbus despaired of making his voyage. It was the night of August 23, in the port of Las Palmas on Grand Canary Island.
After so many years of struggle, his three caravels had finally set sail from Palos, only to run into trouble almost at once. After so many priests and gentlemen in the courts of Spain and Portugal had smiled at him and then tried to destroy him behind his back, Columbus found it hard to believe that it wasn’t sabotage when the rudder of the Pinta came loose and nearly broke. After all, Quintero, the owner of the Pinta, was so nervous about having his little ship go out on such a voyage that he had signed on as a common seaman, just to keep an eye on his property. And Pinzon told him privately that he had seen a group of men gathered at the stern of the Pinta just as they were setting sail. Pinzon fixed the rudder himself, at sea, but the next day it broke again. Pinta was furious, but he vowed to Columbus that the Pinta would meet him at Las Palmas within days.
So confident was Columbus of Pinzon’s ability and commitment to the voyage that he gave no more thought to the Pinta. He sailed with the Santa Maria and the Nina to the island of Gomera, where Beatrice de Bobadilla was governor. It was a meeting he had long looked forward to, a chance to celebrate his triumph over the court of Spain with one who had made it plain she longed for his success. But Lady Beatrice was not at home. And as he waited, day after day, he had to endure two intolerable things.
The first consisted of having to listen politely to thepetty gentlemen of Beatrice’s little court, who kept telling him the most appalling lies about how on certain bright days, from the island of Ferro, westernmost of the Canaries, one could see a faint image of a blue island on the western horizon—as if plenty of ships had not already sailed that far west! But Columbus had grown skilled at smiling and nodding at the most outrageous stupidity. One did not survive at court without that particular skill, and Columbus had weathered not only the wandering courts of Ferdinand and Isabella, but also the more settled and deeply arrogant court of John of Portugal. And after waiting decades to win the ships and men and supplies and, above all, the permission to make this voyage, he could endure a few more days of conversation with stupid gentlemen. Though he sometimes had to grind his teeth not to point out how utterly useless they must be in the eyes of God and everyone else, if they could find nothing better to do with their lives than wait about in the court of the governor of Gomera when she was not even at home. No doubt they amused Beatrice—she had shown a keen appreciation of the worthlessness of most men of the knightly class when she conversed with Columbus at the royal court at Santa Fé. No doubt she skewered them constantly with ironic barbs which they did not realize were ironic.
More intolerable by far was the silence from Las Palmas. He had left men there with instructions to tell him as soon as Pinzon managed to bring the Pinta into port. But no word came, day after day, as the stupidity of the courtiers became more insufferable, until finally he refused to tolerate either of the intolerables a moment longer. Bidding a grateful adis to the gentlemen of Gomera, he set sail for Las Palmas himself, only to find when he arrived on the twenty-third of August that the Pinta was still not there.
The worst possibilities immediately came to mind. The saboteurs were so grimly determined not to complete the voyage that there had been a mutiny, or they had somehow persuaded Pinzon to turn around and sail for Spain. Or they were adrift in the currents of the Atlantic, getting swept to some unnameable destination. Or pirates had taken them—or the Portuguese, who might have thought they were part of some foolish Spanish effort to poach on their private preserve along the coasts of Africa. Or Pinzon, who clearly thought himself better suited to lead the expedition than Columbus himself—though he would never have been able to win royal sponsorship for such an expedition, having neither the education, the manners, nor the patience that it had required—might have had the foolish notion of sailing on ahead, reaching the Indies before Columbus.
All of these were possible, and from one moment to the next each seemed likely. Columbus withdrew from human company that night and threw himself to his knees—not for the first time, but never before with such anger at the Almighty. “I have done all you set for me to do,” he said, “I have pushed and pleaded, and never once have you given me the slightest encouragement, even in the darkest times. Yet my trust never failed, and at last I got the expedition on the exact terms that were required. We set sail. My plan was good. The season was right. The crew is skilled even if they think themselves better sailors than their commander. All I needed now, all that I needed, after everything I’ve endured till now, was for something to go right.”
Was this too bold a thing for him to say to the Lord? Probably. But Columbus had spoken boldly to powerful men before, and so the words spilled easily from his heart to flow from his tongue. God could strike him down for it if he wanted—Columbus had put himself in God’s hands years before, and he was weary.
“Was that too much for you, most gracious Lord? Did you have to take away my third ship? My best sailor? Did you even have to deprive me of the kindness of Lady Beatrice? It is obvious that I have not found favor in your eyes, O Lord, and therefore I urge you to find somebody else. Strike me dead if you want, it could hardly be worse than killing me by inches, which seems to be your plan at this moment. I’ll tell you what. I will stay in your service for one more day. Send me the Pinta or show me what else you want me to do, but I swear by your most holy and terrible name, I will not sail on such a voyage with fewer than three ships, well equipped and fully crewed. I’ve become an old man in your service, and as of tomorrow night, I intend to resign and live on whatever pension you see fit to provide me with.” Then he crossed himself. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
Having finished this most impious and offensive prayer, Columbus could not sleep until at last, no less angry than before, he flung himself out of bed and knelt again.
“Nevertheless thy will not mine be done!” he said furiously. Then he climbed back into bed and promptly fell asleep.
The next morning the Pinta limped into port. Columbus took it as the final confirmation that God really was still interested in the success of this voyage. Very well, thought Columbus. You didn’t strike me dead for my disrespect, Lord; instead you sent me the Pinta. Therefore I will prove to you that I am still your loyal servant.
He did it by working half the citizens of Las Palmas, or so it seemed, into a frenzy. The port had plenty of carpenters and caulkers, smiths and cordwainers and sailmakers, and it seemed that all of them were pressed into service on the Pinta. Pinzon was full of defiant apologies—they had been adrift for nearly two weeks before he was finally able, by brilliant seamanship, to bring the Pinta into exactly the port he had promised. Columbus was still suspicious, but didn’t show it. Whatever the truth was, Pinzn was here now, and so was the Pinta, complete with a rather sullen Quintero. That was good enough for Columbus.
And as long as he had the attention of the shipworkers of Las Palmas, he finally bullied Juan Nio, the owner of the Nia, into changing from his triangular sails to the same square rigging as the other caravels, so they’d all be catching the same winds and, God willing, sailing together to the court of the great Khan of China.
It took only a week to have all three ships in better shape than they had been in upon leaving Palos, and this time there were no unfortunate failures of vital equipment. If there had been saboteurs before, they were no doubt sobered by the fact that both Columbus and Pinzon seemed determined to sail on at all costs—not to mention the fact that now if the expedition failed, they might end up stranded on the Canary Islands, with little prospect of returning anytime soon to Palos.
And so gracious was God in answering Columbus’s impudent prayer that when at last he sailed into Gomera for the final resupply of his ships, the banner of the governor was flying above the battlements of the castle of San Sebastián.
Any fears he might have had that Beatrice de Bobadilla no longer held him in high esteem were removed at once. When he was announced, she immediately dismissed all the other gentlemen who had so condescended to Columbus the week before. “Cristobal, my brother, my friend!” she cried. When he had kissed her hand she led him from the court to a garden, where they sat in the shade of a tree and he told her of all that had transpired since they last met at Santa Fé.
She listened, rapt, asking intelligent questions and laughing at his tales of the hideous interference the king had visited upon Columbus almost as soon as he had signed the capitulations. “Instead of paying for three caravels, he dredged up some ancient offense that the city of Palos had committed—smuggling, no doubt—”
“The primary industry of Palos for many years, I’m told,” said Beatrice.
“And as their punishment, he required them to pay a fine of exactly two caravels.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t make them pay for all three,” said Beatrice. “He’s a hard loaf, dear old Ferdinand. But he did pay for a war without going bankrupt. And he has just expelled the Jews, so it isn’t as if he has anybody to borrow from.”
“The irony is that seven years ago, the Duke of Sidonia would have bought me three caravels from Palos out of his own treasury, if the crown had not refused him permission.”
“Dear old Enrique—he’s always had far more money than the crown, and he just can’t understand why that doesn’t make him more powerful than they are.”
“Anyway, you can imagine how glad they were to see me in Palos. And then, to make sure both cheeks were well slapped, he issued a proclamation that any man who agreed to join my expedition would win a suspension of any civil and criminal actions pending against him.”
“Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes. You can imagine what that did to the real sailors of Palos. They weren’t going to sail with a bunch of criminals and debtors—or run the risk of people thinking that they had needed such a pardon.”
“His Majesty no doubt imagined that it would take such an incentive to persuade anyone to sail with you on your mad adventure.”
“Yes, well, his ‘help’ nearly killed the expedition from the start.”
“So—how many felons and paupers are there in your crew?”
“None, or at least none that we know of. Thank God for Martin Pinzon.”
“Oh, yes, a man of legend.”
“You know of him?”
“All the sailors’ lore comes to the Canaries. We live by the sea.”
“He caught the vision of the thing. But once he noised it about that he was going, we started to get recruits. And it was his friends who ended up risking their caravels on the voyage.”
“Not free of charge, of course.”
“They hope to be rich, at least by their standards.”
“As you hope to be rich by yours.”
“No, my lady. I hope to be rich by your standards.”
She laughed and touched his arm. “Cristobal, how good it is to see you again. How glad I am that God chose you to be his champion in this war against the Ocean Sea and the court of Spain.”
Her remark was light, but it touched on a matter quite tender: She was the only one who knew that he had undertaken his voyage at the command of God. The priests of Salamanca thought him a fool, but if he had ever breathed a word of his belief in God’s having spoken to him, they would have branded him a heretic and that would have brought an end to more than Columbus’s plan for an expedition to the Indies. He had not meant to tell her, either; he had not meant to tell anyone, had not even told his brother Bartholomew, nor his wife Felipa before she died, nor even Father Perez at La Rábida. Yet after only an hour in the company of Lady Beatrice, he had told her. Not all, of course. But that God had chosen him, had commanded him to make this voyage, he told her that much.
Why had he told her? Perhaps because he knew implicitly that he could trust her with his life. Or perhaps because she looked at him with such piercing intelligence that he knew that no other explanation than the truth would convince her. Even so, he had not told her the half of it, for even she would have thought him mad.
And she did not think him mad, or if she did, she must have some special love of madmen. A love that continued even now, to a degree beyond his hopes. “Stay the night with me, my Cristobal,” she said.
“My lady,” he answered, unsure if he had heard aright.
“You lived with a common woman named Beatrice in Cordoba. She had your child. You can’t pretend to be living a monkish life.”
“I seem doomed to fall under the spell of ladies named Beatrice. And none of them has been, by any stretch of the imagination, a common woman.”
Lady Beatrice laughed lightly. “You managed to compliment your old lover and one who would be your new one, both at once. No wonder you were able to win your way past the priests and scholars. I daresay Queen Isabella fell in love with your red hair and the fire in your eyes, just as I did.”
“More grey in the hair than red, I fear.”
“Hardly any,” she answered.
“My lady,” he said, “it was your friendship I prayed for when I came to Gomera. I did not dare to dream of more.”
“Are you beginning a long and gracefully convoluted speech that will, in the end, decline my carnal invitation?”
“Ah, Lady Beatrice, no decline, but perhaps postpone?”
She reached out, leaned forward, touched his cheek. “You’re not a very handsome man, you know, Cristobal.”
“That has always been my opinion as well,” he answered.
“And yet one can’t take one’s eyes from you. Nor can one purge one’s thoughts of you when you’re gone. I’m a widow, and you’re a widower. God saw fit to remove our spouses from the torments of this world. Must we also be tormented by unfulfilled desires?”
“My lady, the scandal. If I stayed the night.”
“Oh, is that all? Then leave before midnight. I’ll let you over the parapet by a silken rope.
“God has answered my prayers,” he said to her.
“As well he should, since you were on his mission.”
“I dare not sin and lose his favor now.”
“I knew I should have seduced you back in Santa Fé.”
“And there’s this, my lady. When I return, successful, from this great enterprise, then I’ll not be a commoner, whose only touch of gentility is by his marriage into a not-quite-noble family of Madeira. I’ll be Viceroy. I’ll be Admiral of the Ocean Sea.” He grinned. “You see, I took your advice and got it all in writing in advance.”
“Well, Viceroy indeed! I doubt you’ll waste a glance on a mere governor of a far-off island.”
“Ah, no, Lady. I’ll be Admiral of the Ocean Sea, and as I contemplate my realm—”
“Like Poseidon, ruler over all the shores that are touched by the waves of the sea—”
“I will find no more treasured crown than this island of Gomera, and no more lovely jewel in that crown than the fair Beatrice.”
“You’ve been at court too long. You make your compliments sound rehearsed.”
“Of course I’ve rehearsed it, over and over, the whole week I waited here in torment for your return.”
“For the Pinta’s return, you mean.”
“Both were late. Your rudder, however, was undamaged.”
Her face reddened, and then she laughed.
“You complained that my compliments were too courtly. I thought you might appreciate a tavern compliment.”
“Is that what that was? Do strumpets sleep with men for free if they say such pretty things?”
“Not strumpets, Lady. Such poetry is not for those who can be had for mere money.”
“Poetry?”
“Thou art my caravel, with sails full-winded—”
“Watch your nautical references, my friend.”
“Sails full-winded, and the bright red banners of thy lips dancing as thou speakest.”
“You’re very good at this. Or are you not making it up as you go along?”
“Making it all up. Ah, thy breath is the blessed wind that sailors pray for, and the sight of thy rudder leaves this poor sailor fullmasted—”
She slapped his face, but it wasn’t meant to hurt.
“I take it my poetry is a failure.”
“Kiss me, Cristobal. I believe in your mission, but if you never return I want at least your kiss to remember you by.”
So he kissed her, and again. But then he took his leave of her, and returned to the last preparations for his voyage. It was God’s work now; when it was done, then it was time to collect the worldly rewards. Though who was to say that she was not, after all, a reward from heaven? It was God, after all, who had made a widow of her, and perhaps God also who made her, against all probability, love this son of a Genovese weaver.
He saw her, or thought he saw her—and who else could it have been?—waving a scarlet handkerchief as if it were a banner from the parapet of the castle as his caravels at last set forth. He raised his hand in a salute to her, and then turned his face westward. He would not look again to the east, to Europe, to home, not until he had achieved what God had sent him to do. The last of the obstacles was past now, surely. Ten days’ sailing and he would step ashore in Cathay or India, the Spice Islands or in Cipangu. Nothing could stop him now, for God was with him, as he had been with him since that day on the beach when God appeared to him and told him to forget his dreams of a crusade. “I have a greater work for you,” God said then, and now Columbus was near the culmination of that work. It filled him like wine, it filled him like light, it filled him like the wind in the sails over his head.

Copyright ©1996 by Orson Scott Card

Excerpted from

Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus
by Orson Scott Card
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