Elemak cast a quick, sidelong glance at Nafai. "Just wondered why certain people were getting so cocky."
Then it dawned on Nafai: Elemak's question was really a back-handed compliment-he had wondered whether Father had put Nafai in charge of things in his absence. And plainly Elemak didn't like the idea of Nafai running any part of the Wetchik family's rare-plant business.
"I'm not interested in taking over the weed trade," said Nafai, "if that's what you're worried about."
"I'm not worried about anything at all," said Elemak. "Isn't it time for you to go to Mama's school? She'll be afraid her little boy got robbed and beaten on the road."
Nafai knew he should let Elemak's taunt go unanswered, shouldn't provoke him anymore. The last thing he wanted was to have Elemak as an enemy. But the very fact that he looked up to Elemak so much, wanted so much to be like him, made it impossible for Nafai to leave the gibe unanswered. As he headed for the courtyard door, he turned back to say, "I have much higher aims in life than skulking around shooting at robbers and sleeping with camels and carrying tundra plants to the tropics and tropical plants to the glaciers. I'll leave that game to you."
Suddenly Elemak's chair flew across the room as he jumped to his feet and in two strides had Nafai's face pressed against the doorframe. It hurt, but Nafai hardly noticed the pain, or even the fear that Elemak might hurt him even worse. Instead there was a strange feeling of triumph. I made Elemak lose his temper. He doesn't get to keep pretending that he thinks I'm not worth noticing.
That game , as you call it, pays for everything you have and everything you are," said Elemak. "If it wasn't for the money that Father and Rash and I bring in, do you think anybody'd pay attention to you in Basilica? Do you think your mother has so much honor that it would actually transfer to her sons? If you think that, then you don't know how the world works. Your mother might be able, to make her daughters into hot stuff, but the only thing a woman can do for a son is make a scholar out of him." He practically spat the word scholar. "And believe me, boy, that's all you're ever going to be. I don't know why the Oversoul even bothered putting a boy's parts on you, little girl, because all you're going to have in this world when you grow up is what a woman gets."
Again, Nafai knew that he should keep his silence and let Elemak have the last word. But the retort no sooner came to his mind than it came out of his mouth. "Is calling me a woman your subtle way of telling me you've got some heat for me? I think you've been out on the road too long if I'm starting to look irresistible."
At once Elemak let go of him. Nafai turned around, half-expecting to see Elemak laughing, shaking his head about how their playing sometimes got out of hand. Instead his brother was standing there red-faced, breathing heavily, like an animal poised to lunge. "Get out of this house," said Elemak, "and don't come back while I'm here."
"It's not your house," Nafai pointed out.
"The next time I see you here I'll kill you."
"Come on, Elya, you know I was only joking."
Issib floated blithely between them and cast an arm clumsily across Nafai's shoulders. "We're late getting into the city, Nyef. Mother will be worried about us."
This time Nafai had sense enough to shut his mouth and let things go. He did know how to hold his tongue-he just never remembered to do it soon enough. Now Elemak was furious at him. Might be angry for days. Where will I sleep if I can't go home? Nafai wondered. Immediately there flashed in his mind an image of Eiadh whispering to him, "Why not stay tonight in my room? After all, we're surely going to be mates one day. A woman trains her favorite nieces to be mates for her sons, doesn't she? I've known that since I first knew you, Nafai. Why should we wait any longer? After all, you're only about the stupidest human being in all of Basilica."
Nafai came out of his reverie to realize that it was Issib speaking to him, not Eiadh. "Why do you keep goading him like that," Issib was saying, "when you know it's all Elemak can do to keep from killing you sometimes?"
"I think of things and sometimes I say them when I shouldn't," said Nafai.
"You think of stupid things and you're so stupid that you soy them every time."
"Not every time."
"Oh, you mean there are even stupider things that you don't say? What a mind you've got! A treasure!" Issib was floating ahead of him. He always did that going up the ridge road, forgetting that for people who had to deal with gravity, a slower pace might be more comfortable.
"I like Elemak," said Nafai miserably. "I don't understand why he doesn't like me."
"I'll get him to make you a list sometime," said Issib. "I'll paste it onto the end of my own."
TWO - MOTHER'S HOUSE
It was a long but familiar road from the Wetchik house to Basilica. Until the age of eight, Nafai had always made the round trip in the other direction, when Mother took him and Issib to Father's house for holidays. In those days it was magical to be in a household of men. Father, with his mane of white hair, was almost a god-indeed, until he was five Nafai had thought that Father was the Oversoul. Mebbekew, only six years older than Nafai, had always been a vicious, merciless tease, but in those early years Elemak was kind and playful. Ten years older than Nafai, Elya was already mansize in Nafai's first memories of Wetchik's house; but instead of Father's ethereal look, he had the dark rugged appearance of a fighter, a man who was kind only because he wanted to be, not because he was incapable of harshness when it was needed. In those days Nafai had pleaded to be released from Mother's household and allowed to live with Wetchik-and Elemak. Having Mebbekew around all the time would simply be the unavoidable price for living in the place of the gods.
Mother and Father met with him together to explain why they wouldn't release him from his schooling. "Boys who are sent to their fathers at this age are the ones without promise," said Father. "The ones who are too violent to get along well in a household of study, too disrespectful to abide in a household of women."
"And the stupid ones go to their fathers at age eight," said Mother. "Beyond rudimentary reading and arithmetic, what use does a stupid man have for learning?"
Even now, remembering, Nafai felt a little stab of pleasure at that-for Mebbekew had often bragged that, unlike Nyef and Issya, and Elya in his day, Meb had gone home to Father at the age of eight. Nafai was sure that Meb had met every criterion for early entry into the household of men.
So they managed to persuade Nafai that it was a good thing for him to stay with his mother. There were other reasons, too-to keep Issib company, the prestige of his mother's household, the association with his sisters-but it was Nafai's ambition that made him content to stay. I'm one of the boys with real promise. I will have value to the land of Basilica, perhaps to the whole world. Perhaps one day my writings will be sent into the sky for the Oversoul to share them with the people of other cities and other languages. Perhaps I will even be one of the great ones whose ideas are encoded into glass and saved in an archive, to be read during all the rest of human history as one of the giants of Harmony.
Still, because he had pleaded so earnestly to be allowed to live with Father, from the age of eight until he was thirteen, he and Issib had spent almost every weekend at the Wetchik house, becoming as familiar with it as with Rasa's house in the city. Father had insisted that they work hard, experiencing what a man does to earn his living, so their weekends were not holidays. "You study for six days, working with your mind while your body takes a holiday. Here you'll work in the stables and the greenhouses, working with your body while your mind learns the peace that comes from honest labor."