Earthborn

"All I came here to say, if you're finally ready to listen, is that this is Akma's first time coming out. Still a little unsteady on his feet. And I think it's significant that he chose to come here. Not just for Edhadeya's sake."

"What do you mean?"

"In my dream I saw a fine young human man, a beautiful woman right behind him, and in one hand he held the hand of an old angel, and in the other the hand of a positively decrepit digger woman who looked awful enough that I could imagine she was me. A voice said to me, in the ancient language of my people, This is the fulfilment of an ancient dream, and a promise of glorious times to come."

"I see," said Shedemei. "The Keeper wants a bit of spectacle."

"I think it would be wise to have children spread the word as soon as he arrives. I think it needs to be seen and reported widely. I think we need an audience."

Shedemei rose from her chair. "If that's what the wise woman of the tu

Akma asked his parents to go with him, but they refused. "You don't need us," they said. "You're only going to Shedemei's school. You don't need us to speak for you."

But he did; he was shy about facing the world. Not because he was unwilling to accept the public shame that would come to him-he would almost welcome that, because he knew that it was part of his lifelong labor, to heal Darakemba of the harm that he had done. No, he was simply afraid that he wouldn't know what to say, that he'd do it wrong, that he'd cause more harm. Remembering how it had been to have all his crimes stand present before him, he was very much afraid of doing anything to add to their already unbearable number. Even though he now searched his heart and found nothing there but the desire to serve the Keeper, he also knew that the pride that had so distorted his life was still waiting somewhere in his heart. Maybe someday he could trust that he had fully overcome it, that the devoted servant of the Keeper was his true self forever; but for now he was afraid of himself, afraid that the moment he was in public life he would begin to gather people to himself as he had done before, and that instead of using this power for their own good, he would again seek adulation the way wine-mad souls lived only for another jar.

He worried about this because he couldn't see the change in himself. His parents saw, though, as he reluctantly left the house and walked out into the street; they remembered well how he, used to walk as if displaying himself, engaging the eyes of every passerby, insisting, demanding that they look at him with liking "before he would release their gaze. Now he walked, not in shame, but without self-awareness. He looked at others, not to get their love, but to understand them a little, to wonder who they were. Like the Keeper, he kept himself almost invisible on the street, yet saw all. Akmaro and Chebeya watched him out of sight, then embraced in the doorway and went inside.

Too soon Akma reached the corner where Rasaro's House occupied all the buildings. He had never been to the school before, but had no trouble finding it-the place was famous. He had the odd notion that his visit was looked for, that there were people watching from the windows as he approached. But how could they know he was coming? He had only decided it himself this morning, and told no one but his parents. They would not have spread the word.

At the door he was met by a stern-looking woman twice his age. "Welcome, Akma. I'm Shedemei," she said. "I know you because I examined you while you were lying there pretending to be dead at your mother's house."

"I know," he said. "I came to thank you. Among other things."

"Nothing to thank me for," she said. "I told them what they already knew-that you weren't dead yet and it would be up to the Keeper whether you survived. I hope you're going to write down your experience during those three days of... whatever it was."

"I hadn't thought of it," he said. "I couldn't write it anyway. I would have to enumerate all my crimes, and they're i

"Well, you've thanked me," said Shedemei. "Why else did you come?"

"I don't really know," he said. "I hoped to see Edhadeya, but that's not the only reason that I came. I just woke up this morning knowing that it was time to come outside, and that it was here I had to come. It was only afterward that I remembered Edhadeya would be here. So I don't know. Perhaps it was the Keeper telling me what was expected of me. Perhaps not. Now that my crisis is over, the voice of the Keeper within me is no more clear than it is for anyone else."

"I don't really believe that," said Shedemei.

"Well it's true," said Akma. "The only difference is that now I'm trying to hear his voice, where before I was trying to hide from it."

"That's all the difference in the world. And yes, I think you're right, the Keeper wanted you to come today. We were warned that you were coming, and we made our own plans. A bit of pageantry. A visual image that we think the Keeper wants the world to see."

Akma felt the dread rise in him until it almost made him sick. "I don't want to do anything... public. Yet."

"That's because you remember how much harm you did in front of audiences, and how it harmed you."

He was stu

"What you haven't realized yet," she went on, "is that because your harm was public, undoing it will have to be public as well. You have a lot of speeches to give, using all your talents as a polemicist, only this time on the side of truth. It's harder in some ways, you know- more rules. But easier, too, because you can speak more from the heart and less from the head. You don't have to calculate the truth the same way you calculate a lie."

"I suppose you're right."

"Being right is my business," she said. "That's why I'm such a superb schoolmaster." Then, to his surprise, she winked at him. "I'm joking, Akma. Hard to believe, but I have a sense of humor. I hope you haven't lost yours."

"No," he said. "No, I was just... I'm just... easily distracted these days."

Someone was coming down the corridor. He looked, and knew the man at once, though he was in shadow. "Bego," he whispered. "Bego," he said aloud. "Are you here? I didn't know that you were here."

Bego sped up and, forgetting dignity, opened his wings and glided a little as he rushed to his former pupil. "Akma," he said. "You don't know how I've yearned to see you. Will you forgive me?"

"For what, Bego?"

"For using you, for misleading you, for trying to guide your thought without telling you-these were all crimes of the first order, Akma. I know you're all caught up in what an awful fellow you are, so that mine look like petty faults to you, but you have to know... ."

"I know," said Akma. "All I remember of our time together is what a gift your wisdom and learning were to me, and how much strength I got from your confidence in me." He held his teacher's hands, the folds of Bego's wings covering his fingers. "I was so afraid for you, for the punishment Motiak might give you."

Bego laughed. "I thought it was the end of the world. Do you know his punishment? He forbade me to read. I was barred from the library. Three spies stayed with me, awake in shifts, to see to it I didn't so much as scratch my name in the dirt with a stick. No reading, no writing. I thought that I'd go mad. My life was in the books, you see. The only people that I valued were the rare others, like you, who were as much at home with reading as I am. And then to be cut oft" from it-it was madness, I lived as a lunatic, hardly sleeping, longing for death. And then one day it dawned on me. What are books, anyway? The words of men and women who had something to say. Only when you read the book, the only voice you hear in your head is your own. You have the advantage of permanence, of being able to reread the same words again and again; but that's really a lie, because it gives you the impression that the writer thought and spoke permanently, when in fact the moment the book was written, the writer changed and became someone else, endlessly exciting because he was endlessly reinvented. To read a book is to live among the dead, to dance with stones. Why should I mourn for having lost the company of the dead, when the living were still here, their books yet unwritten, or rather they're being written in every moment of their lives!"