Earthfall

Not even the Oversoul. Especially not the Oversoul.

Zdorab's only contact with the master computer was through the Index and, later, through the ordinary computers of the starship. He had no dreams, and as far as he knew the Oversoul neither cared about him nor heard any of his thoughts. How else could he have installed his clandestine wake-up program? The Oversoul had no particular use for him except to provide the other set of chromosomes for Shedemei to reproduce. Well, that was fine-Zdorab didn't have all that much use for the Oversoul, either. He was firmly convinced that whatever it was the Oversoul wanted, it didn't care much about the comfort and happiness of the human beings it manipulated. And because the Oversold didn't care about him, he was the one person in the whole community with privacy.

At the same time, in the back of his mind, Zdorab hoped that, in fact, the Oversoul did hear his thoughts and knew all about the wake-up call. It had probably already removed it, in fact; Zdorab hadn't checked it for the same reasons that he hadn't removed it himself. The Oversoul wouldn't let anything dangerous happen during the voyage. Elemak wasn't going to wake up until Earth. And when he did, Zdorab could truthfully say, "I left the wake-up call in place. The Oversoul must have found it."

He silendy rehearsed the words, shaping them with his lips and tongue and teeth, knowing even as he did it that Elemak wouldn't believe him, or if he did he wouldn't care.

They're wrong to have brought me with their family, wrong to force me to choose between them in their deadly domestic quarrels.

He stood before Shedemei's sleep chamber as the lid slipped back and her eyes fluttered open. She smiled weakly.

"Hi, brilliant and beautiful lady," he said,

"To be flattered upon first waking is every woman's fondest dream," she said. "Unfortunately I'm still stupid from the drugs."

"What drugs?" He helped her sit up before he undamped and dropped the side of the chamber so she could get out.

"You mean I'm just naturally this mentally slow?"

She got up and clung to him, partly to support herself as she tried to get her legs working again in the low gravity, and partly as an embrace between friends. He responded, of course, and began telling her of all that the different children had accomplished since she had last been awake. "I think this may be the finest school that ever existed," he said.

"And how convenient that the teachers are all put to sleep between terms," answered Shedemei.

They spent the hours together talking about the children, especially their own, and about anything that came to Shedemei's mind. But they did not talk about the one thing preying most on Zdorab's mind, and Shedemei noticed something was wrong.

"What is it?" she asked, "You're not telling me something."

"Like what?" he answered.

"Something is worrying you."

"My life is worry," he said. "I don't like climbing into the sleep chamber."

She smiled thinly. "All right, you don't have to tell me."

"Can't tell you what I don't know myself," he said, and since this contained a grain of truth-he didn't know whether the Oversoul had removed his program or not-Shedemei's truthsense allowed her to believe him and she relaxed.

A few hours later he said goodbye to the children in a ritual that they were all used to by now, since their teachers all came and went this way. Handshakes or hugs all around, depending on the child's age; a kiss for his own children whether they liked it or not; and then Nafai and Shedemei escorted him to his chamber and helped him in.

As the drugs began to take effect, though, he was filled with a sudden panic. No, no, no, he thought. How could I have been so stupid? Elemak will never be loyal to me, no matter what I do. I have to change the program. I have to keep him from waking up and taking Nafai by surprise. "Nafai," he said. "Check the life support computers."

But the lid of the chamber was already closed, and he couldn't see whether Nafai was even watching his lips, and before he could even move a hand, the drug overwhelmed him and he slept.

"What did he say?" Nafai asked Shedemei.

"I don't know. Something was bothering him but he didn't know what?"

"Well, maybe he'll remember it when he wakes up," said Nafai.

Shedemei sighed. "I always have that same anxiety, too, like I've forgotten to say something very important. I think it's just one of the side effects of the suspension drugs."

Nafai laughed. "Like when you wake up in the middle of the night with a very important idea from a dream, and you write it down and then in the morning it says, ‘Not the food! The dog!' and you have no idea what that could possibly mean or why you once thought it was important."

"The real dreams," said Shedemei, "you don't have to write down. You remember them."

They both nodded, remembering what it felt like to have the Oversold or the Keeper of Earth speak to them in their sleep. Then they returned to the children and set to work on the next part of their training.

Chveya was working with Dza on coaching some of the younger children through their exercises. They had learned years ago that everybody had to be supervised or they would start to slack off, even though Nafai had warned again and again that if they didn't put in two hard hours every day in the centrifuge, they would reach Earth with bodies so slack and feeble that they would have to borrow Issib's chair just to get around. So the younger children exercised with older children calling the rimes, and the older children worked with younger ones monitoring them. That way they never had peers "telling them what to do." The system worked well enough. Dza was still not Chveya's friend-they really hadn't that much in common. Dza was one of those people who couldn't stand to be alone, who always had to surround herself with the hubbub of conversation, with eager gossip, with laughter and mockery. Chveya could see that, now that Dza wasn't bossing them anymore, the younger girls genuinely liked her. It appeared to Chveya like a physical co

Father had talked to her about it, and Mother, too, when she was awake the last time. You spend too much time alone, Chveya. The other children sometimes think you don't like them. But to Chveya, reading a book was not the same as being alone. Instead she was having a conversation with one person, a sustained conversation that stuck to the subject and didn't constantly fly off on tangents or get interrupted by someone demanding to tell her gossip or talk about her problem.

As long as Chveya got her solitary time, though, she could get along peaceably enough with the others- even Dza. Now that she had got over her childish infatuation with being "first child," Dza was good company, bright and fu