As she talked, Udad, Didul's next older brother, had come up behind him. "Why are you listening to this witch?" Udad demanded.
"Have them kill her."
"That's the voice of your father," said Chebeya. "Kill anyone who dares to tell you the truth. Only don't do it yourself. Have someone else do it for you."
Udad turned to the diggers. "Why are you standing there, letting her do this? She's got some kind of magic control of my stupid brother-"
With a cry of rage, Didul turned around and made as if to lash his brother with the whip. Udad cringed and covered his face with his hands and screeched, "Don't hit me! Don't hit me!"
"There you see it," said Chebeya. "That's what you'll become, when your father is through with you."
She could see the last threads binding Didul to Udad turn to rage and shame-a negative connection.
"But are you already like him, Didul? Or is there a man inside you?" Udad, shamed now, backed away. "I'm going to tell Pabul that you're letting Akmaro's wife turn you against us all!"
"Does that frighten you, Didul?" asked Chebeya. "He's going to tell on you. Does that frighten you?"
"I'm leaving," said Didul. "I don't want to hear any more of your lies." ‘
"Yes, leaving me so the guards can kill me," said Chebeya. "But I promise you that if I die here today, you'll hear my voice inside your heart forever."
Defiant anger sparking in his eyes, Didul turned to the diggers. "I want to see her alive tomorrow, with no more lashes on her than she already has."
"That's not what your father said," one of them retorted.
Didul grinned savagely at him. "He said to obey his sons. If this woman is harmed, I'll have you skinned alive. Do you doubt me?"
Ah, the fire in his eyes! Chebeya could see that he had the gift of command. She had kindled his pride and now it was burning, burning in his heart.
The diggers backed off.
Didul tossed the whip back to the one who had lent it to him. Then he spoke one more time to Chebeya. "Get back to work, woman."
She looked him in the eye. "I obey the lash. But someday, wouldn't you like to see someone obey you out of true respect?" Despite the pain of the wounds on her back and the blood in her eye, she bent over and picked up her hoe. She scratched ineffectually at the soil. She could hear him walk away.
"I'll kill her," said one of the diggers. "What can he do about it? His father would never approve of him listening to her."
"Fool," said the other. "If he wants his father to kill us, do you think he'll tell him the truth?"
"So let's us tell him first."
"Oh, great idea. Go to Pabulog and tell him that his son let this woman talk him down? How long do you think we'd live if we were going around telling that story?"
Chebeya listened to them with amusement. Her words had had their effect on these diggers, too. It wasn't much of a plan, to stir up trouble among Pabulog's sons and soldiers. And they might kill her yet. As it was, she'd be paying for this day's work in pain for many days to come.
"That was a stupid thing to do," someone muttered. "You could have got us all killed."
"Who cares?" someone else whispered. "Didn't Akmaro spread the word for us to think of how we might deliver ourselves? At least she thought of something."
Didul and Udad were back near where Luet and Akma worked. Luet flinched from them, but Akma stood his ground. How much of what she said had he heard? Perhaps all of it; perhaps little. But he stood his ground.
Udad reached out and pushed at Akma, who staggered backward but did not fall. There was no surprise in that. No, the surprise came when Didul lunged at Udad and sent him sprawling in the dirt. Udad immediately sprang up, ready to fight his younger brother. "What was that! Do you want me to beat you up?"
Didul stood and looked him in the eye. "Is that all you can do? Beat up on people who are smaller than you? If you touch me, then you prove that everything she said about us is true."
Udad stood there, flustered, confused. Chebeya could see the ties of loyalty shifting even as she watched. Udad, uncertain now, suddenly wanted Didul's good opinion more than anything, for he was ashamed not to have it; just as Didul, in turn, wanted Chebeya's good opinion. That was the beginning of loyalty. Wouldn't that be the perfect vengeance, to turn Pabulog's own sons against him?
No, not vengeance. Deliverance. That's what we're trying for, to save ourselves, since the Keeper seems unwilling to do it.
"I can't tell," said the Oversoul. "Is our plan working or not?"
Shedemei chuckled wryly. "Well, at least the Keeper noticed us. That dream she sent to Akma. And Chebeya's sudden impulse to defy Pabulog's sons. If that was theKeeper."
"Yet the Keeper still says nothing to us. We're a gnat buzzing in the Keeper's ear. We are brushed away."
"So let's go back and keep buzzing."
"The Keeper's plans will go forward regardless of what we do or don't do," said the Oversoul.
"I hope so," said Shedemei. "But I do think she cares very much what people do. Down there on Earth, of course, but also here in this ship. She cares what happens."
"Maybe all the Keeper cares about is the people of Earth. Maybe she no longer cares about the people of Harmony. Maybe I should go home to Harmony now and tell my otherself that our mission is over and we can let humans there do whatever they want."
"Or maybe the Keeper still wants you here," said Shedemei. Then a new thought occurred to her. "Maybe she still needs the powers of the starship. The cloak of the starmaster."
"Maybe the Keeper needs you," said the Oversoul.
Shedemei laughed. "What, I have some seeds and embryos up here that she wants me to put down somewhere on Earth? All she has to do is send me a dream and I'll plant wherever she says."
"So we go on waiting," said the Oversoul.
"No, we go on prodding," answered Shedemei. "Like Chebeya did. We roust the old she-bear from her den and goad her."
"I'm not sure I like the implications of your metaphor. She-bears are destructive and dangerous when they've been goaded."
"But they do give you their undivided attention." Shedemei laughed again.
"I don't think you have enough respect yet for the power of the Keeper."
"What power? All we've seen from the Keeper up to now is dreams."
"If that's all you've seen," said the Oversoul, "then you haven't been looking."
"Really?"
"The gornaya, for instance. That massif of impossibly high mountains. The ancient geological data from before the departure of humans forty million years ago shows no tectonic formation or movement that could have caused this. The plates in this area weren't moving in the right direction to cause such incredible folding and uplift. Then, suddenly, the Cocos plate started moving northward with far more speed and force than any tectonic movement ever recorded. It attacked the Caribbean plate far faster than it could be subducted."
Shedemei sighed. "I'm a biologist. Geology is barely comprehensible to me."
"You understand this, though. A dozen ranges of mountains with peaks above ten kilometers in height. And they were lifted up within the first ten million years."
"Is that fast?"
"Even now, the Cocos plate is still moving northward three times faster than any other plate on Earth. That means that underneath the Earth's crust, there's a current of molten rock that is flowing northward very rapidly-the same current that caused North America to rift along the Mississippi Valley, the same current that crumpled all of Central America into pieces and jammed them together and... ."