This doesn't mean anything, thought Mon. This feeling is just a holdover from my childhood. It's just the Keeper of Earth trying to get me to disbelieve what Akma is saying.
What am I thinking? I don't even believe in the Keeper of Earth, and here I am blaming him for this throbbing meaningless stupid insane chant running over and over through my mind. I can't get rid of my superstitions even when I'm trying to get rid of my superstitions. He laughed at himself.
Laughed aloud, or perhaps just breathed as if laughing-it didn't take much for Akma to pick up on it.
"But perhaps I'm wrong," said Akma. "Mon is the one who really understands this. Why were you laughing, Mon?"
"I wasn't," said Mon.
Wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong.
"I mean my first thought, Mon, you'll remember this, my first thought was that all three species should separate, but you're the one who insisted that humans and angels could live together because of all these affinities between us."
"You mean this comes from Mon?" asked Aronha. "Mon, who jumped off a high wall when he was three because he wanted to fly like an angel?"
"I was just thinking," said Mon, "that all those things you say about the diggers, the angels could also say about us. Low, belly-crawling creatures. We can't even hang cleanly from a tree limb. Filthy, squatting in dirt-"
"But not hairy!" said Khimin.
"Nobody's going to listen to us," said Ominer, "if we start saying that angels are better than humans. And the kingdom would fall apart if we start saying humans and angels should be separate. If we're going to make this work, we have to exclude diggers and only the diggers." Mon looked at him in surprise. So did Akma. "If what's going to work?" asked Akma. "This. This whole thing we're preparing for," said Ominer. Mon and Akma looked at each other.
Ominer realized that he had said something wrong. "What?" No one answered.
Then Aronha, in his measured way, said, "I didn't know that we had any plan to take these discussions public."
"What, we're going to wait around until you're the king?" asked Ominer scornfully. "All this urgency, all this secrecy, I just assumed Akma was preparing us to start speaking against Akmaro's so-called religion. His attempt to control and destroy our society and turn the whole kingdom over to the Elemaki, is more like it. I thought we were going to speak out against it now, before he's succeeded in getting diggers accepted as true men and women throughout Darakemba. I mean, if we're not, why are we wasting our time? Let's go out and make some digger friends so at least we won't be thrust aside when they take over."
Akma chuckled a little. To others, it sounded like easy confidence- but Mon had been with Akma long enough to know that he laughed like that when he was a little bit afraid. "I suppose that has been the goal in the back of our minds," said Akma, "but I don't think it had graduated to the status of a plan."
Ominer laughed derisively. "You tell us there's no Keeper, and I think your evidence is conclusive. You tell us that humans never left Earth, that we're not older than the sky people or the earth people, we just evolved in different places, and that's fine. You tell us that because of this, all the things your father is teaching are wrong, and in fact the only thing that matters is, what culture will survive and rule? And the way to answer that is to keep diggers out of Darakemba and preserve this civilization that has been jointly created by humans and angels, the civilization of the Nafari. Keep the Elemaki with their filthy alliance between humans and dirt-crawling fat rats confined to the gornaya while we find ways to tame the great floodplains of the Severless, the Vostoiless, the Yugless and multiply our population to such an extent that we can overwhelm the Elemaki-all of these mar-velous plans, and you never thought of going out and talking about them in public? Come on, Akma, Mon, we're not stupid."
The look on Khimin's and Aronha's faces made it clear that it was the first time they had ever thought of these ideas, but of course, given Ominer's exasperated tone, they weren't about to admit their shameful stupidity.
"Yes," said Akma. "Eventually we would have started to speak to others."
"Masses of others," said Ominer. "It's not as if you're going to change Father's mind-Akmaro keeps Father's brain in his traveling bag. And none of the councilors is going to join us in opposing Father's will. And if we talk about this stuff quietly and secretly, it'll look like conspiracy and when it gets exposed it will look as though we're shameful traitors. So the only possible way to stop Akmaro's destruction of Darakemba is to oppose him openly and publicly. Am I right?"
Wrong. This is wrong. This is wrong.
By reflex, Mon almost answered with the message throbbing through his mind. But he knew that this message was a holdover from his childhood faith in the Keeper, that he had to overcome this superstition and reject it in order to have any hope of deserving Akma's respect. Or Bego's, or his brothers', whatever, whoever. Akma's respect.
So instead of saying what was in his heart, he answered with his mind alone: "Yes, you're right, Ominer. And it's true that Akma and I never discussed this. Akma probably thought about it, but I know I didn't. Now that you say it, though, I know you're right."
Aronha turned soberly to Mon. "You know he's right?"
Mon knew what Aronha was asking. Aronha wanted to have the assurance that Mon's old gift of discernment was committed to this struggle. But Mon refused to consider those feelings as "knowledge" anymore. Instead knowledge was what reason discovered, what logic defended, what the physical evidence demanded. So even though Aronha was asking one question, Mon could answer honestly using the only meaning of the word know that he believed in anymore. "Yes, Aronha. I know he's right, and I know Akma's right, and I know I'm right."
Aronha nodded soberly. "We're the king's sons. We have no authority except as he gives it to us, but we do have enormous prestige. It would be a crippling blow to Akmaro's reforms if we came out publicly against them. And if it's not just the Motiaki but also Akmaro's own son. ..."
"People might take notice," said Akma.
"Knock them back on their buttocks, that's what it'll do," said Ominer.
"But that's treason," said Khimin.
"Not a thing we're saying denies the authority of the king," said Ominer. "Haven't you been listening? We affirm the ancient alliance of humans and angels. We affirm our ancestors' decisions that the descendants of Nafai should be kings over the Nafari. What we reject is this superstitious nonsense about the Keeper loving the diggers as much as he loves the sky people and the middle people."
"You know," said Khimin, "if you think about it, the angels are the sky people, and we humans are the earth people, and the diggers aren't people at all!"
"We won't win much support," said Akma dryly, "if we start calling human beings ‘earth people.' "
Khimin laughed nervously. "No. I guess not."
"Ominer is right," said Akma, "but I'm also right when I say that we're not ready. We have to be able to speak on this subject, any one of us, at any time."
"Me!" cried Aronha. "I'm not like you and Mon, I can't just open my mouth and have speech pour out of it for hours."