Earthfall

"You've persuaded me. I'll keep the cloak."

"The cloak is nothing. You're already doing something far worse."

Nafai regarded him steadily. "Am I to understand that you're really here trying to persuade me to keep your four oldest children awake during the voyage, teaching them, raising them for you, so that when you awake you'll find them already grown?"

"Not at all," said Issib. "I'd hate that."

"Well, then, what is all this about?"

"Keep them awake, but bring me awake too, sometimes. Once a year for a few weeks. Let me teach all the children computers, for instance. Nobody's better at that than me."

"They won't need computers in the new colony."

"Mathematics then. Surveying. Triangulation. I can read the same books as you and teach them just like you. Or were you pla

"I never thought of that."

"You mean the Oversoul never thought of that."

"Whatever."

"Do it in shifts. Wake Luet up for a while, but then let her sleep again. Wake me, wake Hushidh. Wake Mother and Father. A few weeks at a time. We'll see the children grow, then. We won't miss it all. And when we reach Earth, they'll be men and women. Ready to stand beside you against the others,"

Nafai didn't answer right away. "That's not the way the Oversoul explained it to Luet."

"So, where is it engraved on stone that you have to do everything the Oversoul's way? As long as you do what he wants, the methodology hardly matters, does it?"

"Does Hushidh feel the same way?"

"She might. In a while."

"I won't take anyone's child without their agreement."

"Really? And what about the children themselves? Going to ask them?"

"I really ought to," said Nafai. "I'll think about this, Issib. Maybe this compromise will work."

"Good," said Issib. "Because I think the Oversoul's right. If we don't do this, if we don't give you strong young men and women to back you up, then when we get away from the starship, when the Oversoul's influence weakens, you'll be a dead man, and so will I."

"I'll think about it," said Nafai.

Issib rose up from the chair and leaned toward the door, then stepped lightly toward it, the floats bearing almost all of his weight. At the door he turned.

"And something else," said Issib.

"What?" asked Nafai.

"I know you better than you think."

"Do you?"

"For instance, I know that the Oversoul talked to you about this whole thing long before Luet ever let anything slip."

"Really?"

"And I know that you wanted it to happen all along. You just didn't want it to be your idea. You wanted it to be us persuading you. That way we can never blame you later. Because you tried to talk us out of it."

"Am I really that clever?" asked Nafai.

"Yes," said Issib. "And I'm really clever enough to figure it all out."

"Well, then, I'm not so clever after all."

"Yes you are," said Issib. "Because I really do want you to do it. And I never will be able to blame you if I don't like the results. So it worked."

Nafai smiled wanly. "I wish you were completely right," said Nafai.

"Oh? And how am I wrong?"

"I would rather, with all my heart, let all our children sleep through the voyage, Because I would rather have there be no division between us all in the new colony. Because I would rather make my brother Elemak the king of us all and let him rule over us, than to have him as my enemy."

"So why don't you?"

"Because he hates the Oversold. And when we get to Earth, he'll resist just as much whatever it is the Keeper of Earth wants us to do. He'll end up destroying us all because of his stubbor

"I'm glad you understand that," said Issib, "Because if you ever start to think that he ought to rule, that's when he'll destroy you."

Volemak, Rasa, Hushidh, Issib; and then at last Shedemei and Zdorab came to him, only an hour before they were all supposed to go to sleep for the voyage. "I don't want to do it," said Zdorab.

"Then I won't waken your children," said Nafai. "I'm not sure yet that I'm going to waken anyone's children."

"Oh, you are," said Shedemei. "And you're going to waken us, too, from time to time, to help teach them. That's the deal."

"And when we get to Earth, and our children are all ten years older than Elya's and Meb's and Vasya's and Briya's, you'll stand up to them with me? You'll say, We thought it was a good idea? We asked him to do it?"

"I'll never say I thought it was a good idea," said Zdorab, "But I'll admit that I asked you to do it."

"Not good enough," said Nafai. "If you don't think it's a good idea, why are you asking me to let your only two children take part in it?"

"Because," said Zdorab, "my son would never forgive me if he knew that he had a chance to reach Earth as a man, and I made him arrive there as a boy."

Nafai nodded. "That's a good reason."

"But remember, Nafai," said Zdorab. "The same thing goes for the other children. Do you think that when Elya's boy Protchnu wakes up and finds that your younger son, Motya, is eight years older than him instead of two years younger, do you think that Protchnu will ever forgive you, or Motya either? This will cause hatred that will never be healed, generation after generation. They will always believe that something was stolen from them."

"And they'll be right," said Nafai. "But the thing that was stolen, it wasn't taken away until they had already rejected it."

"They'll never remember that."

"But will you?"

Zdorab thought about it for a moment.

"If he doesn't," said Shedemei, "I'll remind him."

Zdorab smiled grimly at her. "Let's go to bed," he said.

No matter who would be wakened later, all would be asleep for the launch itself. There was too much stress, too much pain to pass through it consciously. Instead they would be encased in foam inside their sleep chambers.

Each couple put their own young children to bed, laying them into their suspended animation chambers, kissing them, then dosing the lid and watching through the window until they drifted into the drugged sleep that began the process. There was some fear in the children, especially the older ones who understood something of what was going on, but there was also excitement, anticipation. "And when we wake up, we'll be on Earth?" they asked, over and over. "Yes," their parents said.

Then Nafai took the parents to the control room and showed them the calendar with the midvoyage waking scheduled. "You'll be able to check all your children and make sure that they're sleeping safely," Nafai assured them.

"Now I can sleep peacefully indeed," Elemak answered with dry irony.

Nafai watched them all go to sleep, one by one, and one by one he authorized the life support computers to drug them, surround them with foam, chill them until their bodies were barely alive at all. Then he, too, climbed into his chamber and drew the lid closed after him.

No human being saw the ship rise silently into the air, a hundred meters, a thousand, until it was as high as the magnetics of the landing field could raise it. Then the launching rockets fired, blasting downward as the starship rose up into the night sky.

Far away, on the other side of the narrow sea, travelers on the caravan road looked up and saw the shooting star. "But it's rising," said one of them. "No," said another. "That's just an illusion, because it's coming toward us."

"No," said the first again. "It's rising into the sky. And it's much too slow to be a shooting star."

"Really?" scoffed the other. "Then what is it?"

"I don't know," said the first. "But I thank the Over-soul that we could see it."