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Nafai felt the arrows enter his body, Elemak's buried deep in his chest, Meb's arrow through his neck. The latter arrow was more painful, the former more dangerous. The pain of both was exquisite. Nafai almost lost consciousness.
(Wake up. You've got too much to do to nap now.)
It hurts it hurts, Nafai cried out silently.
(It was your plan, not mine.)
But it was the right plan, so Nafai didn't pull the arrows out until the paritka brought him into the center of the village. As he had expected, Vas and Obring were terrified when they saw the paritka fly in and hover over the grass of the meeting place, Nafai slumped in the seat, an arrow protruding from his chest, another stuck clear through his throat.
Luet, called Nafai silently. Come out and pull the arrows from me. Let everyone see how I was ambushed. That I carried no weapon. You must do your part.
He could see as if through Luet's own eyes; the kind of closeness that had almost driven him mad, back when he received his father's vision so long ago, was now much more easily borne, for the cloak protected him from the most distracting aspects of the Oversoul's recorded memories. He saw clearly what her eyes saw, but only hints of her feelings, and almost none of that stream of consciousness that had maddened him before.
He saw how her heart leapt within her at the sight of him, and how she was stricken by the sight of the arrows in him. How she loves me! he thought. Will she ever know how I love her?
She cried out. "Come out, all of you, and see!"
Almost at once Elemak's voice came from the distance. "Stay in your houses!"
"Everybody!" cried Luet. "See how they tried to murder my husband!"
They were pouring out of the houses, adults and children alike. Many of them screamed and cried at the sight of Nafai, the arrows in him.
"Look- he didn't have even a bow with him," she said. "They shot at him with no provocation!"
"It's a lie!" cried Elemak, striding into the village. "I thought they'd try something like this! Nafai put the arrows in himself, to make it look like an attack."
Now Zdorab and Volemak were there with her, and they were the ones who reached up and pulled the arrows from him. The one in his neck had to be broken and pulled out from the arrowhead side. Elemak's arrow tore his chest badly coming out. He felt the blood rush out of both wounds, and speech was still impossible for him, but Nafai also could feel the cloak working within him, healing him, keeping the wounds from killing him.
"I refuse to let you blame us for this," said Elemak. "Nafai's an expert at playing the victim."
But Nafai could see that no one was buying Elemak's lies, except perhaps Kokor and Dol, who were never terribly bright and were easily deceived.
"No one believes you," said Father. "Nafai himself knew that you were pla
"Oh, really?" asked Elemak. "Well, if he's so wise now, why did he stroll right into this supposed ambush?"
Nafai put the answer in his fathers mind.
"Because he wanted everyone to see your arrows in him," said Father. "He wanted everyone to see clearly who and what you are, so there's never any doubt about it."
"Most of us saw it all along," said Rasa. "We hardly needed Nafai to bear such wounds."
"It doesn't matter," said Luet. "Nafai wears the cloak of the Oversoul. He's the starmaster now. The cloak is healing him. There's nothing Elemak and Mebbekew can do to harm him now."
Am I ready yet? Nafai asked. The pain had subsided considerably.
(Almost.)
Elemak was keenly aware that no one was with him now, except Meb, who had no choice. Even Vas and Obring were averting their gaze from him—there'd be no support from them. But then, he had never expected any. "Whatever we did," said Elemak, "we did for the sake of our children, our wives—and your wives and children, too. Do you really want to leave here? Is there a one of you who wants to leave this place?"
"None of us want to go," said Luet. "But we all knew that this was the plan from the begi
And then—the crowning insult—Eiadh added her voice to Luet's. "I don't want to leave Dostatok," she said. "But I would rather wander in the desert forever than have a decent man killed to keep us here."
She spoke with fire, and Elemak felt it burn within him. My own wife, and she damns me with her accusations.
"Ah, you're all so brave now!" he cried. "But yesterday you agreed with me. Did any of you really think that our peace and happiness here would be preserved without bloodshed? You've all known it from the begi
(Now.)
He rose to his feet. To his surprise, he was unsteady, lightheaded. At once he "remembered" why—the cloak took energy from his own body when it had to, and the process of healing him so quickly was sucking strength from him faster than the cloak could replenish itself from the sunlight. However, he also knew that this temporary weakness would not stop him from doing all that he needed to do.
"Elemak," he said. "I've wept all the way here. It fills me with anguish, what you've tried to do. If only you'd bend enough to accept the Oversoul's plan—I would have followed you gladly if you had only done that. But all along, if s been you, your ambition to rule, that has torn us apart. If you hadn't plotted with them, led them, do you think these weak ones would ever have resisted the Oversoul? Elemak, don't you see that you've brought yourself to the edge of death? The Oversoul is acting for the good of all humanity, and it will not be stopped. Do you have to die before you'll believe that?"
"All I know is that whenever the Oversoul gets mentioned, it's you or your whiny wife or your mother the queen who's angling for control."
"None of us has sought to rule over you or anybody else," said Nafai. "Just because you live every waking moment with dreams of controlling other people doesn't mean that the rest of us do. Do you think that it's my ambition that created this paritka I'm standing on? Do you think it's Mother's plotting that holds it off the ground? Do you think it was Luet's—what did you call it, whining?— that brought me here, a day's journey in an hour?"
"It's an ancient machine, that's all," said Elemak. "An ancient machine, just like the Oversoul. Are we going to take our orders from machines?"
He looked around for support, but the blood on Nafai's throat and tunic was too fresh; no one met his gaze except Mebbekew.
"We're moving the village to the north, near Vusadka," said Nafai. "And all of us, including the older children, will work with the Oversoul's machines to restore one starship. And when it's ready, then all of us will enter the starship and rise up into space. It will take us a hundred years to reach Earth, but to most of us it will seem like a single night, because they'll sleep through the whole voyage, while to the rest of us it will seem like a few months. And when the voyage ends, we will come out of the ship and stand on the soil of Earth, the first humans to do so in forty million years. Are you telling me that you mean to deprive us all of thatadventure?"
Elemak was silent; so was Mebbekew. But Nafai knew what was passing through their minds. A grim resolve to back down now, but at the first opportunity knock him unconscious, slit his throat, and throw his body in the sea.
It would not do. They had to be convinced of the futility of resistance. They had to stop their plotting and concentrate their efforts on making the ship spaceworthy.